EQUS REA: Canada’s 1st Member-Owned Rural Smart Grid Project

Lead Proponent

EQUS REA

Project Background

This project deploys a next generation Ultra–Rural Radio Frequency mesh network and enabling infrastructure for utility and consumer interface and outage management, which will allow increased penetration of renewable energy sources. The project includes an integrated system to collect data, monitor and configure the energy load profile and verify emission offsets. The project includes installations of Electric Vehicle (EV) charging stations, Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) and solar systems. The EQUS service area spans 26 municipal districts and counties in Alberta. This project will address challenges associated with serving rural customers such as terrain, distance, accessibility and communications.

Results

EQUS improved its utility and customer interface, increased customer engagement and awareness while improving response times and repairs to outages for farms, residential, commercial and industrial sites in rural areas. This project increased renewable energy sources, integrated energy storage, reduced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and modernized electricity systems through the implementation of smart grid technologies and systems for infrastructure integration, grid monitoring and automation, data management and communication, and service improvements.

Benefits to Canada

The project will deliver GHG emission reductions from implemented system improvements, increase renewable energy uptake, consumer behavior intelligence and uptake of electric vehicles in the service area, as well as deliver better services to businesses, farms, residential, commercial, and industrial sites in rural areas, while increasing customer engagement and awareness. It will Improve response times and repairs to outages, as well as outage prevention from systems learning. The project will showcase how Canadians can integrate the latest alternative energy technologies together to provide a fully integrated building system while reducing GHG emissions.

Next Steps

EQUS will be troubleshooting and improving communication among its smart grid infrastructure to improve accuracy and reliability. EQUS is also planning to install solar PV and more EV charging stations in other area to support the growing EV fleet.