Renewable Energy in New Brunswick: The Situation
It’s no mystery that it’s a time of major change for traditional energy producers. The need for the transition to renewable energy from more traditional sources is an unprecedented one for power utilities.
And it’s not a problem that can be ignored for long. Non-renewable sources of energy will dwindle and eventually run out and no one wants to be the one caught unprepared with an old system that can’t adapt to new sources of energy like wind, water, solar biomass and geothermal.
NB Power director of integrated resource planning Michael Bourque says that the provincial utility is planning ahead for these changes by developing a system, the Smart Grid, that will be able to accommodate not only new sources of energy but what will surely be a greater number of smaller generation points rather than the larger fewer generation points that exist now and have been the norm.
Bourque says that the complete overhaul of the system is something they haven’t seen in the almost 100 years they’ve been in operation.
“There has never been a need to accommodate up until now. The change that is occurring is a phenomenon that probably started maybe about five years ago,” Bourque says. “There is a requirement to change the physical infrastructure on the system that has been the same for the last 100 years.”
“The way you physically produce electricity has been using that traditional methodology of building those large central generators and the large transmission system and distribution system to flow electricity in one direction from the large central generators all the way to the low. Now we’re starting to see the customers’ desires changing. They want to produce their own electricity and they’re curious about this.”
Naveco Power COO Peter Corbyn says that this interest from customers to produce their own energy comes from wanting to be self-sufficient in case of storms, being concerned about the environment and looking to save money in the long run.
“I truly believe and I think it’s probably relatively safe to predict that the adoption of especially solar energy will do nothing but climb in this province. There’s no question about that,” Corbyn says.
Corbyn says that as people become more interested in producing their own electricity, utilities like NB Power should provide the incentive of payment for additional capacity generated. As it is now, NB Power’s net metering program allows customers to connect their own environmentally sustainable generation unit to NB Power’s distribution system. Customers are then only billed for the difference between the energy they consume and the energy they produce. But if an individual were to produce more energy than they consume, they wouldn’t be compensated.
“If you were to go put solar panels on your roof, you’re going to want to be staying in your house for at least 15-20 years to do that, which is quite a while,” Corbyn says. “That said, if there were incentives, either from the federal government, provincial government or utility to pay down that amount and make the payback more feasible for yourself as a homeowner, that would be a good incentive.”
But more sources of energy being put on the grid means utilities like NB Power need to become more versatile to accommodate this.
“What we’re starting to see now is something very different on our system,” Bourque says. “We want to introduce that at the distribution level but now we need a design change on the system to accommodate that and we’re starting to build what we call smart infrastructure through a partnership with Siemens … That same smart grid infrastructure can then be used to enable renewable generators to be connected to the system, like solar and batteries.”
Bourque explains that if a utility is faced with too many energy sources from individuals going online at once before having a grid that can accommodate them, voltage fluctuations occur and there’s no way to manage these fluctuations other than putting in conventional equipment like voltage regulators along the line. This increased need for equipment means an increase in cost that is passed on to customers.
Bourque says they’re trying to get ahead of this problem by having the infrastructure in place before it happens.
“We want to come at it a different way,” he says. “We want to put the infrastructure in place first to allow that to occur instead of imposing charges. We think that a smart system … will be able to manage those voltage fluctuations by managing the load as well as the resource and still allow the customer to produce electricity and reduce their bill.”
“Nobody’s got it figured out. It’s going to be ultimately a software solution. We want to be able to have a software solution instead of putting conventional equipment in that would be traditionally used for managing the voltages because we think software and the ability to control the end use resource is the way to go.”
The move towards renewable energy is happening not only with individuals interested in managing their electricity bill but with projects seeking to take advantage of the expression of interest NB Power has put out to source renewable energy.
Bourque explains that the utility has a renewable portfolio centre that needs to be met by 2020. They’re aiming to ensure that 40 per cent of their total in-province electricity sales come from renewable sources by then and Bourque says they’re on track to meet that goal.
“Wind seems to be the predominantly preferred choice, especially if you want to reduce costs and achieve economies of scale,” he says. “Predominantly these projects are on the transmission system. So when you connect on a transmission system you can accommodate larger size to take advantage of the economies of scale that will reduce cost to the developer and thus allow us to have a lower power purchase agreement price.”
Corbyn says that overall, New Brunswick is making progress towards incorporating more renewable energy but that we’re playing catch-up to most of the rest of North America. He explains that bringing renewable energy onto the grid is a tricky process and that he sees NB Power being careful about implementing new systems to ensure that the grid can handle the energy being put on it and that bills don’t climb too much.
“I am very optimistic about the growth of renewable energy in the province,” he says. “It’s a general rule of thumb that … the more renewable energy you put on the grid, the more the grid has to become smart because the grids of old with large generating facilities like Mactaquac or Point Lepreau, they do not have to be smart.”
“As you have more and more generating facilities that are smaller, the grid has to become more intelligent so that it knows what’s coming on the grid and coming off the grid at any point in time.”
Bourque expects that NB Power will see not only this physical system change but a change in their business model.
“Our business model is going to change also because we are in the business to produce and deliver electricity and we know that that model is being eroded because of customer choice,” he says. “We will always be the provider of a commodity product to some customers within the province because we have an obligation to produce and deliver that electricity … Whatever model is chosen, the system is being developed now to be able to accommodate them.”
“We likely will have a hybrid system, one that continues to sell electricity as a commodity, to produce and deliver electricity but we will probably have attached to it some kind of products and services entity that will look at end-use customers and residential and small commercial customers, that will look at their ability to be able to provide their own electricity.”