By Lara Fominoff @LaraFominoff on Twitter with files from Geoff Smith @GeoffSmithLNN

Lethbridge first in western Canada to use new technology for electrical grid energy efficiency

May 4, 2018 | 4:07 PM

LETHBRIDGE – If all goes well, the City of Lethbridge is hoping to eventually save up to 33,600 megawatt hours (MWh) – or the equivalent of removing thousands of homes from the electrical grid.

It’s the first community in western Canada to introduce new technology that is expected to safely lower the operating voltage of the electric distribution system, on a trial basis at one of its six substations. The trial phase will continue through to February of 2019.

Electric Utility Manager Stew Purkis explains what’s going to happen.

“The substation that was chosen was in west Lethbridge, one of our two over there. And it was chosen because it’s servicing mostly residential load, which is where we wanted to test the product.”

Customers aren’t expected to notice any difference in the delivery to their electricity, but there will be small energy savings for each individual customer that is expected to add up to larger overall power consumption demand on the whole system.

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Dominion Voltage Incorporated (DVI) is the company that is deploying the new technology; a volt/VAR control software program the company calls “Edge,” says spokesperson Allen Finch.

“Across the last six years across North America we’ve been deployed throughout a number of U.S. states. California has been particularly strong. But also, a recent appointment in Ontario, and most recently in New Brunswick.”

Finch says their first appointment was in Oregon, where their energy savings in one area was in the two per cent range across the distribution grid.

In Glendale, California, he adds there has been a three per cent overall energy savings, through voltage reduction. Even a one to two per cent reduction in Lethbridge would take the equivalent of 2,000-4,000 homes off the grid.

Purkis says that because every home in the city also now has a smart metre, people are now getting more accurate bills and overall peak demand times in the city can be better monitored.

The data provided by the new metres is required to leverage the new grid optimization technologies to increase the grid efficiencies and lower customer bills.