Canada calls for smart grid project proposals

The Government of Canada’s Energy Innovation Program has issued a smart grid call for proposals to support key technology, market and regulatory innovations that will help scale pilot projects into grid-wide deployments.

The intended results include significant impacts to enhancing grid reliability, resiliency and flexibility; energy affordability; enabling greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions; and making market conditions more favourable to scaling successful innovations.

The calls for interest were sent out for two different areas of focus, including smart grid demonstration projects and regulatory innovation capacity-building.

Focus area 1: Demonstration

The demonstration focus area will provide support to projects that demonstrate innovation in smart grid technologies and solutions, as well as market or contract mechanisms. Innovations may be jurisdiction-specific.

Objectives of this focus area are to:

• Accelerate grid modernisation to better utilise the capacity of existing electricity assets; increase the reliability, resiliency, and flexibility of the power system and increase the penetration of distributed energy resources.
• Improve customer accessibility of grid-integrated solutions that provide more affordable energy and lower total greenhouse gas emissions.
• Sufficiently represent a given electric system to meaningfully inform future deployment considerations.
• Address well-defined market gaps with a proposal to build business solutions.
• Advance inclusivity, diversity, equity and accessibility (IDEA) in the electricity sector.

Mandatory requirements for the eligible projects include the need to involve the electricity distribution system and to share knowledge and insights to enhance public awareness.

Demonstration projects must address technological or market challenges by validating and deploying pre-commercial technologies and/or market concepts.

Projects should aim for Technology Readiness Levels (TRL) of between five and eight.

Programme funding for this call is open to projects that request between CAD500,000 (approximately $361,400) and CAD6 million (approximately $4.3 million), comprising up to 50% of total project costs.

The focus area is now open for expressions of interest applications until 10 January 2024.

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Focus area 2: Regulatory innovation

The regulatory innovation capacity-building focus area seeks to support innovation in the economic regulation of Canada’s electricity systems.

This will be accomplished by funding projects that are related to regulatory experimentation, regulatory sandboxes and capacity building within organisations for regulatory innovation.

These projects should promote cooperation and information sharing among actors operating within Canada’s electricity systems, enable the creation and adoption of innovative approaches for the economic regulation of these systems and create the conditions for meaningful participation and engagement in the regulatory ecosystem.

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Objectives of this focus area are to:

• Promote regulatory experimentation necessary to support electrical grid modernisation.
• Support the development of the skills, knowledge and expertise required for enabling regulatory innovation and experimentation in grid modernisation.
• Accelerate the adoption of flexible regulatory procedures needed for the adoption of innovation in the electrical grid and increase participation and learning from innovation in a regulatory context.
• Advance inclusivity, diversity, equity,and accessibility (IDEA) in the electricity sector.

Programme funding for this call is open to projects that request between CAD250,000 (approximately $181,000) and CAD1.5 million (approximately $1.1 million), comprising up to 75% of total project costs.

The focus area is now open for expressions of interest applications until 10 January 2024.

In announcing the call for proposals, the Canadian government cited the importance of smart grid technologies for the modernisation of safe and secure delivery of electricity, due to their ability to “provide foundations for new market structures and a higher quality of service for customers,” they state in a release.

“They are a key enabler for GHG mitigation as they increase the hosting capacity of renewable generation, leverage more from the electricity infrastructure we have, and increase resiliency.”

The Government of Canada aims to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, which they aim to achieve through the Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act.