Summerside, the little city with no energy now leads Canada with renewable energy integration

By David Dodge, GreenEnergyFutures.ca

In just one decade Summerside, Prince Edward Island has become the leading city in Canada transitioning to renewable energy.

This is all the more amazing when you consider both Summerside and the province of PEI had virtually no energy generation before 2003 except diesel and fuel oil generators which were mostly designed to serve as backup.

By 2005 they still only had 15 megawatts of diesel energy capacity and it was then they embraced wind power installing and purchasing 21 megawatts of wind capacity.

Today 99% of PEI’s provincial electricity production comes from wind power with about 1% coming from diesel and biomass generators. The rest, about 75% is imported from New Brunswick via an undersea cable.

In Summerside, they chose a different path forming their own utility (Summerside Electric) in 2002. They wanted energy security and local energy production and in 2005 the City set a goal of being 100% green.

“In 2005, the city had a strategic plan and one of the items in the strategic plan was to become a 100% green electric utility,” says Greg Gaudet, Director of Municipal Services for Summerside.

100% green energy goal

Gaudet looks after the water utility, sewer utility, public works, roads and electric utility which sounds like a big job, but Summerside has the autonomy necessary to be nimble and innovative in the design of their electricity system.

In 2007 Summerside purchased the first renewable energy from the West Cape Wind 99 megawatt wind farm in PEI.

But they knew they wanted to generate their own electricity and become as self-sufficient as possible.

This is the beginning of an amazing journey

Summerside’s journey from have not city to renewable energy leader

Summerside PEI has gone from almost no electricity production except for local diesel generators to a grid that secures 62% of its electricity from local renewable energy production in just one decade.

This amazing transformation from a ‘have not’ City when it comes to electricity has occurred by taking some of the most innovative actions ever seen in a city in Canada.

In 2009 the City opened their community-owned Summerside Wind Farm right in the city. It consisted of four 3-megawatt turbines for a total capacity of 12 megawatts.

As cool as that was Greg Gaudet knew since the wind doesn’t always blow, they needed to to ensure they used as much of the locally generated wind power as possible.

And this is where it gets innovative.

The city started installing a network of fibre optic cables and smart meters and then sourced some electric, thermal energy storing furnaces and offered them to residents as a replacement for their dirty oil furnaces.

Called “Heat for Less” the program sweetened the deal for residents by offering them half-price electricity for 5 years if they purchased the energy storing furnaces and water heaters and hooked them up to the smart grid.

Gaudet says they introduced Heat for Less as an opportunity for residents to get a cheaper source of heat for their homes and businesses.

“What that allows us to do is we can inject energy into it [the furnace] 12 hours of any day. We pick the hours when the electricity goes in it, and the other 12 hours it doesn't draw any electricity, zero, and just depletes the storage.”

“We call it the automatic oil fill-up that ain't oil.”

These steps helped Summerside get 42% to 46% from local renewable energy with just over one hundred of the thermal energy-storing furnaces and water heaters.

Turns out this was just the first innovation Summerside would invest in.

They kept expanding their smart grid and by 2024 had installed 588 energy-storing devices in homes in Summerside. This surpassed their goal of 400.

Since then they’ve worked with the AI smart grid company Blue Wave and started work on a smart microgrid at one of the local facilities.

“In 2017, we embarked on a smart grid demonstration project at our large wellness facility called the Credit Union Place,” says Gaudet.

Credit Union Place smart microgrid has helped the facility save $100,000 per year on utilities. Photos Summerside

This consisted of a 336-kilowatt solar installation and a 250-kilowatt, 890-kilowatt-hour energy storage system. The project saves Credit Union Place about $100,000 a year. The batteries help time shift the solar energy from low to higher demand periods.

The system helps with peak shaving and solar smoothing and it maintains power quality throughout.

The system also serves as the backup power system for the building negating the need for a backup diesel generator.

Then Summerside worked with Samsung SRE Canada and others to scale up the idea.

“So that's our latest adventure, which brings the City of Summerside up to 62% renewable power being used locally here in the city,” says Gaudet.

Back before 2009 when they installed the wind farm in the City Summerside, like many areas in PEI were running their diesel generators far too often to satisfy electricity demand, well beyond the backup function for which they were intended. At the time the cost of the diesel electricity was about 55 cents per kilowatt hour – a powerful incentive to get creative.

Today Gaudet says it costs 80 cents per kilowatt hour for diesel generation. Fortunately, today PEI gets less than 1% of its electricity from these generators and it’s mostly backup power as was intended.

One big difference in Summerside is the City owns the utility and works hard to reduce their operating costs and keep rates down for their residents.

Electricity costs about 16.7 cents per kilowatt hour in PEI and residents in the Heat for Less program can get it for 8 cents when used for smart grid heating systems.

Now Summerside is exploring other appliances that could help make their grid more efficient.

Adding energy-storing heat pumps to the mix

“We're now looking at expanding the program to go into different types of appliances. This fall we plan to launch a new heat pump that stores energy and it can avoid times for four hours, which is good for our peak,” says Gaudet.

This is common sense. There are plenty of provincial and federal incentives for heat pumps and they are up to 300% efficient, which is even better than the electric energy-storing furnaces used in their Heat for Less program.

Heat pumps are being widely deployed worldwide to electrify heating systems, but grid operators worry about adding to peak loads since they run on electricity.

These units can shift that peak by four hours thus further smoothing out electricity demand into lower demand periods of the day.

Gaudet says calls this “beneficial electrification for the smart grid that can be timed to match renewables or also be timed not to hit our peak.”

“We're also looking into home battery systems, and how they can play a part in that system. If we can control when the energy goes in and out, then that's worth a value to the utility. We could offer some fairly good rates, I think, on that electricity.”

Taking what they’ve learned about smart microgrids Gaudet says they are now looking at developing an energy-positive energy district.

Using their smart grid, appliances, solar and some battery storage their goal is to create energy-positive districts.

Local energy, local benefits

This level of innovation is uncommon, but they are using existing technology in the most strategic way possible to provide affordable local and renewable electricity. The demonstrated commitment to clean electricity and to act in the interests of ratepayers makes this a unique approach in Canada.

Gaudet says their approach provides an “electrical gateway which works with the utility and the customer to make sure everybody benefits.”

Summerside is a small City and the City has paid a small premium for innovation, but they are getting ready for the future.

“Sometimes people get stuck on the now rather than the future. And the future is really going to be energy-intensive for electricity in Atlantic Canada,” says Gaudet.

“Little old PEI had nothing but diesel in the past, or Bunker C, so we've got to be innovative, and we've got to pay a little bit more now to offset the real big hurt coming down in the future,” says Gaudet.

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