Stumbling Along Electric Avenue…A Limited Series
Energy may be the topic of this generation, and though the word itself sometimes gets co-opted as being only about oil & gas it’s far more than that. Energy is about what fuels, pun intended, our economy and our standard and way of living. Through this series we will explore several power related topics and how cleantech solutions can be used to modernize how we generate, manage and use power while improving economic outcomes. First up, we cover grid resiliency, which is top of mind given the recent massive power outage that turned the lights off for hundreds of thousands of Ontarians earlier this year but has had equally massive impacts across Canada over the past few years.
As our climate changes…Canadian-made energy independence options…a story from the front.
Grid resiliency comes up a lot in articles about energy transition; but what is it exactly and how do we know if the grid in our part of the world is resilient? Grid resiliency is generally defined as the capability to withstand, respond to and recover from power disruptions. Why is it important? Well, we expect to have power when we want it at our fingertips. We also want and need it to be at an affordable price to conduct our daily lives and run our businesses. However, between March 28 and 30, 2025 a good part of Ontario was impacted by an ice storm that resulted in significant ice accretion and led to widespread power outages and localized flooding. We saw firsthand what it looks when weather events impact the grid and how a large grid like Hydro One manages struggled to recover. At one point there were over one million people in Ontario without power, over 100,000 people had no electricity for over 8 days and as of April 10th there were still over 8,500 customers without power according to Hydro One.
One of those people, Bryan Watson, well known in the cleantech and investment community, was impacted with no power for 8 days. Speaking to him about this he indicated that while his small EcoFlow 720 Wh battery was exceptionally handy, his lesson learned is that he needs to equip himself to better deal with these events that happen regularly in the Trent Lakes and Kawartha region – though not often to this extent! He told me that he feels like he should have been prepared as “he knows how brittle the grid is” and that he has only himself to blame for not being able to enjoy his Saltwinds coffee… or the convenience of plumbing. He was able to make it through by sharing power from a neighbour’s generator and charging that little EcoFlow at local community centres.
The point here isn’t for everyone to run out and equip themselves with back up diesel generators to ensure their homes are resilient. These solutions are not only noisy but also relatively inefficient generators of electricity that create more greenhouse gases that cause climate change.
When we talked about solutions to avoid these situations going forward, we can segment them by consumer changes and system changes to the grid.
From a consumer perspective Bryan indicated that having a more robust portable power system (which EcoFlow has!) would have made a huge difference. Beyond that, these systems can integrate dual-fuel inverter generators, renewables like solar panels, or even small modular hydroelectric systems, as applicable. Other options like vehicle-to-grid and bi-directional vehicle to home have potential to help.
These solutions are expensive in the mid to high thousands of dollars depending on the configuration. Consumers also need to consider where they can charge batteries (unless they are powered by solar) and buy gas for gas powered generators when power is down for a significant period of time – something that became a serious challenge in the region given fuel stations also lacked power in many cases or ran out of both gasoline and propane. In this context does it make sense to incentivise consumers to purchase items to increase their resiliency and is there a case to provide upfront “resiliency packages” to consumers payable over time? Possibly. Could it be that’s its cheaper in the long run to make this type of consumer-based investment? It won’t address the grid’s challenges, but it may relieve the issues felt by families if they can keep themselves powered and go on in an almost “normal” mode until repairs are done. In addition, while they were rightfully celebrated, it may also reduce the extreme need (and cost!) for the heroic efforts of electrical professionals from across the country who descended upon Ontario to address the state of emergency.
On the grid side, given the discussion on building and modernizing Canada’s infrastructure, it’s a good time to consider the type of investment in grids that may be required to meet today’s demands and those of the next 20 years. In this case the power outages were caused when trees and branches fell on power lines. So, is the solution to bury all the cables? This would be expensive and take a lot of time. Or could different approaches to modernize the grid be more cost efficient? Canadian cleantech companies have developed several solutions that could increase the resiliency – from line inspection (www.kinectrics.com) to end-to-end battery energy storage solutions (www.peakpower.com) to vehicle-to-grid technologies (www.bluegrid.energy) to the software and hardware that enables all this (https://www.bluwave-ai.com/)! During the outage I spoke with Bryan, and we thought that those long duration batteries from e-Zinc would have come in handy.
And what about distributed resources such as solar panels and wind turbines? For more rural locations such as the Kawarthas, what about the creation of micro-grids using renewable resources managed by smart grid technology that can act to provide peak power and back-up power when the weather causes havoc. It seems clear that infrastructure investments in power need to reimagine approaches and use the proven cleantech technologies to provide more agility and resiliency in the grid. These same approaches can also be used in much more remote communities where combinations of renewable power generation and storage can help get these communities off diesel, reduce the related diesel health impacts and provide more available power for businesses.
To bring it back to policy, all of this should fall into the purview of the yet-to-be-legislated 15% refundable Clean Electricity Investment Tax Credit for eligible investments in technologies that are required for the generation and storage of clean electricity and its transmission. Available to taxable and tax-exempt entities if legislated, we would urge entities thinking about developing and expanding grids to explore the new technologies available to make the grid robust instead of simply planting more dangling power lines for a centralized grid.
The final tally of the cost of this recent ice storm is not known yet but, in the past, the 1998 ice storm damage cost $2 billion in Québec alone and the 2013 ice storm in Ontario cost the Canadian government $98.5 million in long-term recovery and rebuilding efforts.
The financial and human costs of these weather driven events, be they ice storms, flooding or fires are multiplying, and 100-year events are happening every few years now. They require a re-imagination of how power is generated and re-distributed.
In the meantime, Bryan, be sure to get a bigger EcoFlow power station so you can make your precious coffee in the morning even when the grid fails you!
Are you a Canadian Cleantech company that helps with the grid and grid resiliency? Or are you helping build grid projects and looking for Canadian technology options? Click here to let us know and we will feature you as part of this series!