Fredericton Startup Aims To Fill Data Gap In Smart Grid Market
FREDERICTON – A startup coming out of the University of New Brunswick’s Technology Management & Entrepreneurship program aims to help utilities in the province and beyond tackle challenges related to peak energy periods.
With its technology, Pique Analytics hopes to help utilities gather more data on energy use and demand from the grid, but also use available data to reduce large energy demand, the cost of power generation and thus, cost of service for customers, and greenhouse gas emissions, which could lead to a higher carbon tax.
“We’re not saying we’re going to solve everything in the smart grid, but we’re going to take a critical part of the smart grid and make it better and improve it,” said CEO Samson Okpara, an international graduate from Nigeria.
Pique Analytics’ focus is to help utilities and large power users reduce power demand by forecasting energy demand and usage, and implement automatic measures on the grid.
Okpara founded the startup with fellow students Alvin Poernomo from Indonesia and Alpha Behera from India, as well as Monica Forestell of New Brunswick. It was initially a project for their master’s program, but they decided to incorporate and move ahead with the business after graduating earlier this year.
With backgrounds in technology, business, and environmental science, the four share a vision.
“We try to make the environment and the world better by using technology, so we’re trying to address the peak energy problem,” says Poernomo, the chief information officer.
As a case study during their masters program, Okpara and friends looked at data from Saint John Energy. The utility’s VP, Ryan Mitchell, says the hope is doing so could foster innovation that could help tackle the peak energy problem.
Supporting the startup ecosystem to come up with solutions is a hot topic in the smart grid sector in New Brunswick, Mitchell said. Saint John Energy is still exploring in what ways it can best offer that support, but for now, providing access to data is something it can do.
“It’s not that we’re looking to invest or do risky ventures, it’s just, we want to help support people,” says Mitchell. “Because a lot of the challenges that we would face here in New Brunswick are problems that are very common throughout the sector.”
Peak energy is one of those problems. That’s when larger utilities “would have to fire and use their fossil fuel generating plants,” he said.
“It’s generally very expensive or more expensive than off-peak energy. And there is about, in rough terms, approximately two times the impact as it relates to greenhouse gas emissions for energy generation. So there is both an economic and environmental aspect to peak energy,” Mitchell explains.
For Saint John Energy, peak energy takes up approximately $30 million of its operating budget, Mitchell says. It’s predominantly driven by hot water tank usage in the morning before customers go to work. Being able to control how and when the hot water tanks are heating the water could reduce demand on its system.
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Mitchell says Saint John Energy is already looking into various ways to manage the peak energy issue through its smart grid initiative. But having insight on energy demand and usage will allow utilities to make decisions about “when to charge or discharge resources that we have connectivity too,” he says.
Those resources could be in customers’ homes and businesses, or it could be assets Saint John Energy owns, like its Tesla battery.
Okpara says utility companies currently have “a very broad network” of metering systems, with different devices and substations. He says they’re still struggling to get enough information from their grid. While the Internet of Things (IoT) opens up opportunities for utilities to gather real-time data, there remains a gap.
“There are smart devices out there, there are smart AMI metres, but utility companies cannot really harness the power of the data that is being generated on the grid to make insightful decisions to help improve their business,” he said.
Besides, not all utility customers have smart metres. For instance, only 30 percent of Saint John Energy’s customers are on smart metres.
Pique Analytics is designing a data collector device that can be added to the existing infrastructure of analogue metres, making the process to gather data cheaper.
“We’re trying to introduce a very cost effective way of making the grid smarter, without changing or restructuring the way the grid is set up today,” Okpara explains.
Gathering data is just one part of the solution. The startup also offers an analytics platform. It’s like business intelligence, but specifically designed for the smart grid, Okpara said.
“At the end of the day, what we’re generating and what we’re providing, we help the utility companies to be able to make insightful decisions quicker, able to see potential cost savings initiatives in advance,” he said.
Pique Analytics also offers web and mobile apps to help the end-users manage their own energy consumption.
“We’re also trying to increase the awareness of the end-users about peak power demand because most people are not even aware of what they can contribute to the peak power demand and also for the environmental effect as well,” Poernomo said.
Okpara says the plan is to sell these products to utilities that can then distribute them to customers and install as needed.
“We are primarily targeting utility companies directly to provide all the solutions, the hardware, the subscription licenses for the analytics, the access to the online portal and web account for their end-users,” he said.
The quartet is now focusing on getting their product in front of potential customers, get their feedback, and complete product certifications.
They’ve previously relied on funding from pitch competitions since starting the project last October, but they’re currently looking for larger grants to go to the next step.
“We’re speaking with some investors as well,” Forestell said.