Unlocking the grid

Ontario Power Authority (OPA) CEO Jan Carr, Ph.D., P.Eng., was the keynote speaker at “Getting Connected to the Grid," this year’s H G Acres Seminar in Niagara Falls, Ontario on May 2, 2008.

Dr. Carr provided an overview of the transmission and distribution systems in North America and Ontario, covering the key developmental differences between the US and Canada, and subsequently between the different Canadian provinces.

He proposed that the Ontario's electricity grid capabilities can be enhanced by converting it from a pure distribution system to a hybrid distribution-gathering system that can better accommodate distributed generation, and by increased use of communications and automation technologies to create a 'smart grid.'

A complete transcript of Dr. Carr's speech can be found on the OPA's Presentations webpage or directly by clicking here.

The highlights of his speech are summarized below.

US vs Canadian grids

The US electricity industry, being dominated by private enterprise, was driven from the start by market forces. Transmission systems were based around major centers of load or generation and expanded to interconnect locations where demand and economics dictated. The resulting growth of interstate commerce introduced national interests and resulted in a heavy involvement of federal regulation of electricity transmission.

In Canada, however, electricity was viewed as an important tool for enabling economic policy and, very early in its development, became a publicly-owned undertaking. Because much of Canada’s electricity industry developed under public ownership, it developed largely along provincial lines with an emphasis on enabling provincial economies and providing uniform, province-wide access to electricity.

So, while the US has national rules, policies and practices that affect the availability and connection to transmission facilities, Canadian transmission availability and connection policies instead vary from province to province.

Ontario in transition
Today, Ontario has a combination of both the traditional Canadian public-good and the US market-good concepts. On one hand, transmission is treated as a public good and rights are not available for purchase. On the other hand, the province pays constraint charges to generators who cannot get dispatched due to inadequate transmission capacity. The various agencies including the OPA and, more significantly, the Ontario Energy Board (OEB), are now in the process of moving Ontario from a market-based approach that was never fully implemented, toward a public-good approach.

For some time now, long-standing constraints on parts of the transmission system in southern Ontario have made it necessary to curtail any further generation development. This is the 'orange zone' between the Bruce transformer station near Tiverton and the Greater Toronto Area. Far northwest Ontario is also becoming increasingly constrained. This is a generation-rich area, meaning that regional generation capacity exceeds regional load requirements. When load is reduced in a generation-rich region, the transmission loadings out of that region are increased. With recent cutbacks in Ontario’s forest products sector, the electrical load in many areas of northern Ontario is declining.

Distributed generation is, by definition, small-scale. As we move increasingly toward renewable and local sources of generation, we inevitably move toward sources with lower energy densities such as biomass, wind, landfill gas and waste heat. These low-density energy sources are best developed in small-scale facilities, either because that is how they occur (e.g., wind), or because the cost of transport will quickly dominate if distances are too great (e.g., forest-floor biomass).

When located close to loads, distributed generation has the potential to reduce system losses and the need for transmission infrastructure. Unfortunately, many small-scale generators such as wind and small hydro are located in generation-rich regions – so their development actually increases transmission loading.

Therefore, in many areas of the province, Dr. Carr proposed that the distribution system should instead become a gathering system. Challenges will include overcoming the mismatched distribution of generation resources to population density, and incorporation of technologies for reverse power flow and multi-phase requirements of a distributed generation system.

The smart grid
Dr. Carr said that the introduction of more automation and communication capabilities into the distribution system would make the entire grid more efficient. He said smart meters should be seen as technology that will enable many ancillary activities. In addition, to collect metering data, the associated systems can allow electricity use to adapt – either directly through automated appliances or indirectly by alerting customers to cost-saving opportunities or reliability alerts.

Throughout North America, grid planners, owners and operators are struggling with challenges of adapting to requirements which outpace the physical, financial and regulatory constraints on their activities.

Ontario has taken a leading position in addressing these challenges with a robust planning process and North America’s first program to facilitate investment in distributed generation. What the grid needs now is significant new investment and practical, forward-reaching policies to establish the economic and commercial context required for sustainable development and operation.

For further information, please contact:

Dr. Jan Carr
CEO, Ontario Power Authority
+1 416 967 7474
Jan.Carr@powerauthority.on.ca