Innovation

Powering a green Nova Scotia, together.

What does our clean energy future look like?

Imagine a future where a battery in your home stores clean energy, from wind or solar, and provides it to keep your home powered during an outage. Imagine driving to work in an electric vehicle powered by net-zero energy straight from an EV charger in your garage.

Imagine having the data at your fingertips, in real-time, to help you save energy, reduce your cost, gain more choice and control energy use, all while making a difference for the environment.

That future isn’t far off for the Peckham family! They’re helping to power a greener Nova Scotia by doing their part to live sustainably and reduce their carbon footprint—through the Smart Grid Nova Scotia Program.


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How do we get there?

A smarter grid: Modernizing the power grid is an important part of providing reliable and affordable electricity, while allowing for cleaner electricity and maintaining the stability of the grid. We are investing in more renewable energy sources like wind and solar and continue to meet the growing demand from customers adopting new technologies like in in-home battery storage and electric vehicles.

Smart meters: Smart meters allow communication over a secure network, which means you can see and manage your energy use better. It also means we can send billing alerts and tips for energy usage. Smart meters will also notify us when your power goes out, helping us restore power faster during an outage. 

Cleaner energy: We continue to be a leader in North America in reducing carbon emissions—tripling renewable energy to 30% from just 9% over the past decade.  We're working towards 80% renewable energy by 2030, and Smart Grid NS is key to helping us do this.

Electric Vehicles: We have installed electric vehicle fast-charging stations, paving the way for electric vehicle adoption and removing barriers to this new and improving technology. This will change our reliance on fossil fuels and allow us to provide charging technology that gives customers more visibility and control of their charging.

Batteries: We are taking advantage of wind and solar, storing clean energy that customers can access when they need it. Piloting batteries in homes allows us to use the stored energy as a back-up power source in the event of an outage.


 

Smart Grid Nova Scotia

Nova Scotia’s energy future holds exciting possibilities — more wind and solar generation, battery storage, electric vehicles, and even more opportunities to bring renewable energy to the grid. Globally, the electrical grids that have served us over the past century are evolving through new technology into “smart grids.” Smart grids offer a future in which individual pieces of the electrical system — including “smart devices” in customers’ homes and businesses — can communicate with one another, so that the entire electrical system works together to use energy more efficiently. This means lower overall costs for customers and a cleaner environment.

About The Pilot

Nova Scotia’s energy future holds exciting possibilities — more wind and solar generation, battery storage, electric vehicles, and even more opportunities to bring renewable energy to the grid. Globally, the electrical grids that have served us over the past century are evolving through new technology into “smart grids.” Smart grids offer a future in which individual pieces of the electrical system — including “smart devices” in customers’ homes and businesses — can communicate with one another, so that the entire electrical system works together to use energy more efficiently. This means lower overall costs for customers and a cleaner environment.

As we continue to lead North America in reducing carbon emissions, we need innovative solutions to add more renewables and new energy solutions to our grid. In Nova Scotia, we're working on:

  • a 2-MW community solar garden
  • three commercial deployments of rooftop solar and battery storage
  • Up to 150 distributed batteries
  • Up to 120 smart EV chargers

These devices will be centrally connected by a new control software system that will allow us to monitor their performance, and test control capabilities that can optimize how they work to benefit all customers. Some of the benefits we will be testing include:

  • Ways to make solar power more accessible.
  • Optimizing energy storage on the grid.
  • The ability for distributed batteries to provide benefits like reliability, demand management and on-site renewable integration.
  • Testing how battery storage can allow us to bring more renewables to the grid. 
  • Enabling electric vehicle smart-charging - testing coordinated charging and vehicle-to-grid/home technology

This represents a very important step in accommodating the inclusion of new energy technologies and understanding their benefits while maintaining reliability and affordability for customers.

The project is supported by Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, Natural Resources Canada, and the Province of Nova Scotia.

 

EV Fast-Charging Network

Nova Scotia Power's fast-charging network connects Nova Scotia end-to-end so EV drivers can travel through the province with ease. This a significant step toward achieving a lower carbon future.

ABOUT THE NETWORK

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  • Nova Scotia Power’s EV fast-charging network addresses the need for high-speed charging stations, lack of which was a primary inhibitor to Nova Scotians adopting electric vehicles. This effort is part of a larger initiative to build a coast-to-coast network of electric vehicle charging stations across Canada.
  • The Level 3 fast-chargers charge an electric vehicle in as little as 30 minutes, at a cost of $3.75 per 15-minute session.
  • The charging stations are manufactured by AddEnergie, a North American leader in EV charging solutions, and are connected to AddEnergie's FLO Network, Canada's largest EV charging network.
  • Using the free FLO mobile app, EV drivers can easily locate the charging stations, check their availability in real time, and pay for charging sessions.
  • The network enables Nova Scotia Power to study the effects of electric vehicle fast chargers on the power system.
  • The Government of Nova Scotia has installed an additional 12 Level 2 chargers at the same locations. These chargers will provide a charging solution for plug-in hybrid vehicles that are unable to charge using the Level 3 chargers.

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INTELLIGENT FEEDER PROJECT

TESTING TESLA BATTERY TECHNOLOGY WITH CUSTOMERS IN ELMSDALE

Batteries and microgrids could help us use renewable energy more efficiently and make power outages disappear for customers.

Learn how we’re exploring that future today with customers in Elmsdale.
Battery technology and microgrids: Making renewable energy more efficient and customer power supply more secure

In the community of Elmsdale, Nova Scotia Power is working with customers and industry leaders to examine how battery technology and microgrids can help us better serve our customers. Dubbed the “Intelligent Feeder Project,” this pilot project is helping us understand how batteries can help us use renewable energy more efficiently, while providing back-up power to customers during power outages – so they essentially don’t experience the outage!

We have installed residential Tesla batteries at 10 homes in Elmsdale and a grid-sized battery (it’s as big as a shipping container) at the local substation. The batteries are connected to a power line, known as a “feeder,” that receives some of its electricity from a wind farm a few kilometres away. The biggest challenge with wind energy is that you can’t control when the wind will blow, or how strongly, so generation doesn’t match customer demand. The substation battery in Elmsdale enables us to store power generated at the nearby wind farm and then supply that electricity to the grid to match customer demand.

Plus, during power outages, the residential and substation batteries create an independent “microgrid” so that local service isn’t interrupted. Capacity is limited by the battery size, however, customers in the test group have been able to power crucial appliances and electronics for close to 20 hours during outages conditions.

Tech specs:  

  • 10 Tesla Powerwall 2 (5 kW/13.5 kWh) residential batteries
  • 1 grid-sized Tesla Powerpack (1.225 MW/2.45 MWh)

Partners:

  • Opus One Solutions, providing the software that monitors electrical system activity and optimizes battery usage
  • Sustainable Development Technology Canada

 

STILL HAVE QUESTIONS?

Contact our team to learn more. Call 1-800-428-6230 or email smartgrid@nspower.ca.