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The recently-announced Clean Electricity Regulations will reduce pollution in our electricity grids even as the grids grow to meet soaring demand for clean electricity. However, the rules also allow for the continued use of natural gas plants in the name of supporting flexibility and reliability. In part, this is to ensure grid operators have resources that can be brought online quickly when electricity demand is high or renewable energy generation is low.
But gas is not the only flexible option. Every province has an alternative, largely-untapped resource found in customer households and businesses.
By reducing or shifting their electricity usage when demand is high or energy supply is low, homes and businesses across the country can act like flexible power plants and support the stability of the electrical system.
There are numerous examples of what this could look like.
To shift their demand, customers can charge their hot water tanks and electric vehicles when the wind is blowing, so they are ready to reduce demand when the electricity system needs it.
Commercial buildings can optimize lighting, cooling and ventilation through automation.
Coupling insulation with high-efficiency heat pumps means less energy demand when it gets cold. And as more and more homes and businesses ditch fossil fuels for electricity, this customer-driven resource is only getting bigger.
Crucially, these ways of shifting and lowering electricity demand don’t inconvenience participating households and businesses and often come with added benefits like more comfort from better insulation and heating systems, reliability from home batteries keeping the lights on during power outages, and cost savings from reduced energy bills.
What’s better is that people can get paid for it.
Shifting and optimizing energy demand means that electricity utilities save money by not having to pay for unneeded power plants, fossil fuels and grid infrastructure, and they can use more renewable energy when it is available. The more customers lower costs and improve reliability for everyone, the more they can earn.
Electricity system managers are already tapping into customer-driven solutions.
In Ontario, electricity customers can get $75 upfront for using smart thermostats to turn on air conditioning in advance of extreme heat days. Pre-cooling these homes means less energy use when the grid is most strained. No less than 100,000 households enrolled in the first six months, creating a 90-megawatt “virtual power plant.”
As markets and regulations call for replacing fossil fuels with electricity while cleaning up the electricity grid, it is vital that we reorient policy, so paying people for energy efficiency is the first resort and natural gas the last.
As part of advancing their clean-electricity ambitions, the federal government can help push customer-driven solutions to the front of the line.
For example, it could use match funding to incentivize more utility energy efficiency investments and require smart systems to be built into appliances and equipment, like hot water tanks. It can attach requirements to its funding to make sure utilities let demand-side efficiency compete with energy supply options, and customers can save money by sharing energy use data with innovative energy demand technology companies.
Provincial governments also have a vital role to play. They can require utilities to meet targets for energy efficiency, demand flexibility and require electricity planners to value the societal and customer benefits of using less energy.
By unlocking the power potential of households and businesses, we can ensure a reliable and cost-effective electricity system that depends less on gas.
After all, it’s better to pay people than power plants.
Brendan Haley is senior director of policy strategy for Efficiency Canada, a Carleton University energy efficiency research and advocacy centre.
Evan Pivnick is program manager for Clean Energy Canada.
Sachi Gibson is mitigation research director for the Canadian Climate Institute.
Comments
Thankfully, the BC NDP governnent under David Eby has largely done much of what this article wisely calls for, especially with BC First Nations lining up with some major renewable power projects. In addition, BC has upped the ante with net metering credits for rooftop solar.
Since we added rooftop solar, we have not paid an electricity bill (3 years in BC). That said, we are totally dependent on grid supply from mid-Nov thru mid-February. There is no getting around that without an impractical amount of storage and/or domestic wind power. Managing demand is great, but BC is still going to need much more base-load power and large amounts of instant-on reserve - so how about storage options? Pumped storage would be a no-brainer in BC if we had access to sufficient excess power in the summer from roof-top solar. Or gravity storage in municipalities like North Van or New Westminster with access to steep hills?
Yes, I've thought this for a long time. As families become energy producers as well as consumers.....a distributed grid increases flexibility and resilience while making the grid more reliable in times of crisis. Add smart grids to smart themostadts....and a distributed network is more likely to keep the essential things running in a disaster....
What's more, it lowers electricity costs and weakens the power of big centralized utilities based on profit. We don't need to profit from our electricity, we need to distribute the risks and rewards of power generation so all of us are to some degree protected.
As more of the grid is supplied by roof top, small distributing centres......less fossil gas will be needed, emissions will start to go down, and the future might stand a chance of being better, more energy secure and more equal.
It's what we should be working for.
There are severe limits to this. These great new resources are just not there for you. RIght NOW. It's the darkest days of the year when you post this, with solar sources generating perhaps 5% of their summer maximum. The sun is only 25 degrees above the Canadian horizon, at noon, recently.
Alberta has had two "dunkelflautes" in the past 4 years; may have skipped this year, the wind held up. But if you get a calm week between December 10 and January 20, roughly, then a place like Alberta is 90%+ on gas. And everybody needs the heat badly at these temperatures.
This is a nice thing, but it's not a solution for vital needs in Canada. We need a LOT more wind, and power-sharing between the hydro and non-hydro provinces.