As Canada electrifies its economy, solar is ready to rapidly transform underutilized spaces into distributed energy infrastructure.

Globally, solar power provides the lowest cost of energy in history. It is a mature, commercialized technology that is available today – no future breakthroughs or government grants required. Electrification is inevitable. Now is the time to elevate our clean energy standards in Canada. Solar is ready.

For businesses, solar is an opportunity to further monetize existing development assets. Solar is also a visible way to demonstrate corporate social responsibility and connect with clientele who share their sustainable values. Most investments in technology are deflationary. Solar is bankable. With a lifetime far longer than its return on investment, today’s solar drives the net cost of energy down, providing energy rates that are lower now, and for the next 30 years.

Solar power is highly adaptable, easily integrating into developed spaces. Unlike the construction of new centralized power plants, solar is rapidly installed anywhere, at any scale. As a distributed energy resource (DER), solar avoids the expense of long-distance transmission, producing electricity where it is needed. This decentralization of energy not only stabilizes energy costs, it minimizes urban sprawl by maximizing our use of space.

Solar transforms our cities

There is an abundance of urban space that is not being used to its full potential. Rooftops and parking lots are underutilized and can be made productive. Solar transforms them into distributed power plants. By empowering us to rethink how and where we generate electricity, solar is an essential ingredient in the energy mix for a cleaner, electrified future.

Rooftop solar installations built on existing structures have already enabled early adopters to generate up to 100 percent of their electricity and beyond, with many exporting surplus energy to the grid.

Solar canopies that cover parking lots provide benefits that go beyond power generation. They provide shelter from inclement weather, shade in summer, and snow cover in winter. It is infrastructure at human scale that enhances the urban experience.

Achieving Canada’s energy transition

In Canada, renewables generate 70 percent of our electricity. They are already major sources of our energy. Despite advancements in energy efficiency, our energy demand continues to grow, doubling in only 40 years. Distributed solar is one pillar in closing the gap to complete our energy transition, powering the electrification of transportation and heating.

Installing solar into urban spaces enables an agile, bottom-up response to transforming our energy infrastructure. Solar empowers communities and businesses to act now to fight climate change, drive down their long-term energy costs, and supply local economic returns. It is a new form of infrastructure that addresses rising capital costs and operating expenses.

Solar has the power to transform.

Innovative design

At VCT Group, we develop innovative solar products that productively transform space.

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Corporate decarbonization can be a long and complicated process, but Amp helps its clients become leaders in the push to net-zero.

The transition to a low-carbon global economy is increasing the corporate demand for power purchase agreements (PPAs) as organizations seek to reduce emissions and secure their long-term energy costs. As one of Canada’s leading renewable energy developers, Amp’s vision and technological innovations are reshaping traditional sustainability strategies and helping corporations realize their clean energy future.

Forging a new era in Canadian renewables

Steve Schaefer has been with Amp since its inception in 2009 and now serves as Senior Vice President of Origination and Head of Canadian Operations. Schaefer and his team have developed over 130MW of renewable energy across over 550 projects, primarily in the form of feed-in tariff contracts supplied by solar and, more recently, hybrid solar plus battery storage assets.

“The genesis of our commercial and industrial (C&I) strategy is to solve the challenges associated with C&I clients achieving their environmental sustainability targets by providing the most beneficial solutions,” says Schaefer. “This is why Amp is now a top-tier PPA provider globally.”

With decarbonization being new territory for many C&I organizations, Amp’s initial role focuses primarily on education, data collection, and strategic planning.

“More and more C&I organizations are making ambitious net-zero commitments, but they don’t always know where to start,” says Schaefer. “That’s exactly where we come in.”

A holistic approach to decarbonization

Amp has evolved from supplying clean energy solutions to complete decarbonization strategies. In the increasingly competitive renewable energy sector, one of Amp’s key differentiators is its holistic approach to C&I energy transitions.

“Many organizations have taken small steps in the decarbonization space to date, but have now either generated their own net-zero target or had one imposed upon them,” says Schaefer. “Decarbonization doesn’t rely on one single pillar. The only way to reach these goals is through a holistic approach.”

Amp’s unique approach will include combining renewable generation with battery storage and its proprietary digital energy platform, Amp X. “We’re now integrating and unifying real asset development with Amp X, combining supply and demand through a digital platform with a single optimization engine,” says Schaefer. “We will be taking all the energy nodes, whether they’re consumption, generation, or both combined with storage, and providing the unique capability to optimize behind the meter.”

Unlocking energy flexibility with Amp X

The development and evolution of Amp X has been a revelation in the integrated energy solutions space. Working in conjunction with renewable energy and storage assets, Amp X is designed to unlock new levels of optimization and flexibility, enabling C&I customers to potentially generate new revenue streams via participation in energy markets.

Amp is also rapidly establishing itself as a global leader in the energy storage space, with an expanding portfolio of standalone assets and hybridized systems pairing batteries with solar or wind. In addition to extending the penetration of renewable generation, energy storage is emerging as an effective way to reduce peak energy demand.

Amid the rapid progress of Canada’s C&I decarbonization efforts, Schaefer is excited by the scale of the opportunities that lie ahead. “It’s breathtaking to see how many organizations are making that net-zero pledge, and my team and I are excited to support our C&I partners in achieving this vision,” he says.

The post Enabling Commercial and Industrial Decarbonization with Amp appeared first on HiveInnovates.

Community health care services and innovation are urgently needed in Canada, especially as the pandemic persists. Our federal government aims to double the size of the health and biosciences sector and become a top-three global hub by 2025.

To this end, the City of Vaughan is creating a health innovation hub, anchored by Canada’s first smart hospital. The Vaughan Healthcare Centre Precinct (VHCP) is a ground-breaking public-private partnership between the City of Vaughan, Mackenzie Health, ventureLAB, and York University designed to improve the health and health care of citizens in the York Region and GTA through research and innovations in public policy, services, technology, clinical practices, processes, and treatments, and to train the next generation of world-class health professionals.

A smart hospital for the future

The $1.7 billion Cortellucci Vaughan Hospital opened in July 2021, marking the first new hospital to open in Ontario in over 30 years and the first hospital in Vaughan. The hospital is vital as an anchor for the VHCP’s development of the remaining lands.

“The remarkable technological innovations make this hospital stand apart from the rest,” says Vaughan Mayor Maurizio Bevilacqua. “It’ll generate over 1,000 jobs in the community and has the ability to adapt over time as new technologies and industry standards emerge.”

The hospital is home to specialized programs including Mackenzie Health’s Woman and Child and Inpatient Mental Health programs and the Inpatient Integrated Stroke unit. It also offers a full-service emergency department, core services such as critical care and medicine, modern surgical services, and advanced diagnostic imaging capabilities.

“Through fully integrated systems and medical technology that share information, we are ultimately improving the patient experience to provide the best possible care to our patients,” says Mackenzie Health President and CEO Altaf Stationwala.

The VCHP represents an unprecedented partnership that will transform health care delivery for Ontarians while developing talent, increasing jobs, and powering economic prosperity.

The next generation of health talent

In May 2021, it was announced that partner York University is moving forward with plans to establish a School of Medicine, which will be an important part of the VHCP project.

As a research-intensive university, York is also home to centres of research excellence in global health, healthy aging, muscle health, anti-microbial resistance, disease modelling, health informatics, vision research, neuroscience, data visualization and advanced robotics, among others.

“York University has long been committed to establishing a community-focused medical school to help address Ontario’s unmet health care needs,” says Rhonda Lenton, President and Vice-Chancellor of York University. “We look forward to continuing to build on our partnership with the City of Vaughan and our collaboration on the VHCP to expand access to modern medical education that considers the social and economic determinants of health to enhance prevention and rehabilitation.”

Entrepreneurs create transformative solutions for health care

Commercialization partner ventureLAB is a leading global founder community for hardware technology and enterprise software startups and scaleups. Its growth-oriented initiatives focus on raising capital, commercializing technology and IP, talent retention, and customer acquisition, enabling founders to scale quickly.

Through the VHCP, ventureLAB will leverage the success of its Hardware Catalyst Initiative to enable founders to build innovative medtech solutions. “Vaughan is a leader in health care innovation,” says Melissa Chee, ventureLAB’s President and CEO. “We look forward to working with scale-ready tech founders building a new generation of anchor Canadian companies with transformational hardware and enterprise solutions.”

Innovation York, York University’s innovation unit, will also partner with ventureLAB to foster collaborative innovation and entrepreneurship opportunities in Vaughan.

The VCHP represents an unprecedented partnership that will transform health care delivery for Ontarians while developing talent, increasing jobs, and powering economic prosperity.

The post Vaughan Emerges as an Epicentre of Health Care Excellence in Canada appeared first on HiveInnovates.

The momentum in Markham continues to build as it stakes its claim as a leading hub for high-tech innovation. Located in York Region at the heart of the Greater Toronto Area, Markham is Canada’s most diverse city and is home to Canada’s second-largest tech­nology cluster with more than 650 corporate head offices, 1,500-plus high-tech and life science companies and 240 international companies. With that success, and its sterling reputation as a business-friendly city as a foundation, plans are underway to grow with a renewed vision of what’s next.

What’s in the MiX?

The Markham Innovation Exchange (also called MiX) will play a key role in that future. It will be Ontario’s first innovation cluster connecting the dots between knowledge and production centres of varying scales all in the same place. It’s unlike any other industrial park in the country because of its expansive size (1,920 acres), scope and location in the core of Canada’s biggest economic region.

Despite pressure to use these lands for residential housing and other commercial uses, the City of Markham, is committed to fostering and attracting high-quality businesses. By staying true to its original vision, it will attract essential, high-value employment to the area.

A project like MiX has never been more important. As Canada leans into COVID recovery, it’s clear that gaps in the supply chain were exacerbated during the pandemic and need to be solved now. The MiX is part of the solution, as Joe Berridge, a highly regarded urban planner and partner with Urban Strategies Inc., confirmed in his July 2021 presentation, Where Innovation Is Realized. In it, he revisited Markham’s initial objectives and shared his findings before Markham Mayor Frank Scarpitti and City Council.

To ensure the MiX meets real-world innovation needs, more than 30 key innovation leaders were consulted, including those from sectors such as information and communications technology, automotive, medtech, real estate, , academia, and accelerators. “Based on the feedback, we confirmed the validity of the MiX concept and that it was indeed necessary,” Berridge concluded. “It’s an extremely viable project for Markham to undertake, based on the broad support from the sectors we canvassed about the need for a new tech district.” 

He also added that market conditions for the MiX are more favourable now than a few years ago. He asserted that the MiX not only plays a critical role for Markham but for the province, too. Mayor Scarpitti agrees and adds: “I actually think this is a Canadian play. The fact that we are seen in such high regard in relations to political stability, corporate reputation, all the ingredients and the companies that are here. This positions us well not only just locally and provincially, but for Canada.”

Future-proofing development and innovation

It’s clear the MiX can optimize Markham’s established innovation and tech ecosystem to create critical mass innovation. Made-in-Ontario productions can be supported where businesses can scale up quickly and test domestically to shore up supply chains. Here, modern facilities and innovation are designed to enhance connections, allowing like-minded disruptors to collaborate serving as a living laboratory to help ideas take flight.

Looking further ahead, Markham has struck an interdepartmental team to advance the MiX and its staff will report back to the committee on the next steps in fall 2021. It will also look at leveraging the green elements as an asset to attract impact-focused firms and sustainability as part of corporate policies, along with green energy zones that could be developed in the future. In Markham, the quest for innovation never rests.

The post Markham’s Innovation District Set to Expand Its Leadership Position Globally appeared first on HiveInnovates.

Alison Carden

North American Practice Director, Digital Citizen Experience, GHD Digital

Data is often the key to making smart and effective decisions for projects. But understanding all the data available can be difficult for many organizations. It’s about knowing the right data points to make the most effective decisions.

“Clients need actionable insights from their data. Recent advances in data science and digital technology enable us to draw accurate and relevant conclusions,” says Nipa Basu, Global Practice Director, Digital Intelligence, GHD Digital. “We can collect and digitize data, potentially build or customize an existing platform to optimize resource allocation, track and mitigate cost overruns, and even calculate and predict ROI accurately. It’s about insight-based decision making and benefiting from the correct decisions.”

It’s about insight-based decision making and benefiting from the correct decisions.

Through business and location intelligence, for example, GHD Digital can create city-wide visualizations, conceptualize zoning and land use updates, and assess the impact of new infrastructure projects. Using scenario analyses or predictive cost modelling, budgets can be built with fewer uncertainties. Project teams might also be able to construct their assets digitally using Building Information Modelling (BIM) and other tools to understand specific components. With each data-driven insight, infrastructure cost prediction improves throughout the entire lifecycle.

Finally, communicating with impacted communities is a crucial part of any infrastructure project but is often overlooked. Citizens expect the same level of service they receive from other industries and infrastructure project owners need to find new ways to connect with their communities.

GHD Digital’s Digital Citizen Experience team works with municipalities, police and private sector clients to build digital communication channels and help connect them with their stakeholders, save money, and ultimately be more effective in their operations. GHD Digital recently worked with a large Southeastern Ontario municipality to completely rethink how they make city services available to citizens. Through a customer service portal, they can now offer all their services online while also understanding how citizens engage and interact with municipal-led projects on a completely new scale.

“Adopting a digital-first mindset, leveraging data to provide actionable insights and putting the citizen experience first will make a huge difference to Canada’s infrastructure,” says Ali Carden, North American Practice Director, Digital Citizen Experience, GHD Digital. “We can use digital technologies to completely reinvent how we understand important projects, big or small.”

The post How Data-Driven Strategies Are Pushing Innovation appeared first on HiveInnovates.

Dr. Josipa Petrunic is CEO of The Canadian Urban Transit Research and Innovation Consortium, the non-profit responsible for the development and commercialization of low-carbon transit technologies.

I recently joined the federal government to announce massive investments in public transit: $2.75b over five years to electrify transit fleets with zero-emissions battery and hydrogen fuel cell electric buses. It’s thanks to the leadership of Minister Catherine McKenna, who has championed public transit at the Cabinet table advocating to build back better through green infrastructure projects that directly support the mobility needs of Canadians.       

Just five years ago there were only a few dozen pilot buses on the roads in Canada, now, the industry has deployed nearly 100 zero-emissions buses – with another 250 in short-order.

The funding will not only help achieve the government’s goal of 5,000 ZEBs, it will also be pivotal in eliminating 750,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions annually and in creating hundreds of thousands of good jobs.     

Even with billions committed, there is, however, still work to do to harness the transformational benefits of transit innovation.

Electrification is complicated, requiring a complete overhaul for transit agencies including new energy storage and charging technology, with some high-powered systems installed directly on routes, as well as local green hydrogen production amongst other complex considerations – all backed by a highly-skilled workforce.

Smart feasibility studies are necessary, and secure tax efficient and evidence-based procurements saving Canadians millions.

The government must support and require smart roll out planning that includes these studies. Planning for zero-emissions buses and their allied energy infrastructure means feasibility studies driven by physics and mathematically-based modelling. Lifecycle physics and economic calculations that tabulate how these zero-emissions buses will perform in local communities, whether they will run out of energy while in-service, how much energy they need onboard at the start of the day, as well as how much energy needs to be pumped into the vehicle throughout the day are all vital calculations required before committing to purchases.

Agencies need to know ahead of time what the electricity or hydrogen bill will look like compared to their current diesel bills and whether their routes need to be redesigned to match any limitations of the technology before they buy.

CUTRIC, the organization I lead, has spent years developing the non-profit Rout∑.i 2.0 tool with transit members to do just that. We’ve used it to run tabulations for cities across North America. This non-profit technical work has helped transit agencies walk into this complexity with eyes wide open.

The pandemic will subside, and cities will return. We will know better in the future how to keep transit riders and drivers safe and healthy so they can help keep the economy humming. Transit will soon come back, but it needs to be better – faster, smarter, cheaper, and greener for all Canadians. Money is the first step, now we need smart planning to get this done.

The post Canada’s Pandemic Budget the Perfect Opportunity to Expedite Transit Innovation appeared first on HiveInnovates.

Robert Hornung

President & CEO, Canadian Renewable Energy Association (CanREA)

Our long, hard winter has passed: howling blizzards have turned to rain showers and our beautiful landscapes are once again turning green.

Amidst this optimism, Canadians are also looking to the federal government’s new budget and its plans to rebuild from the economic impacts of COVID-19 through a green recovery, one that also positions Canada to tackle the climate change crisis.

It’s time for a brighter path forward

Communities are already feeling the impacts of climate change, such as increasingly severe spring floods. Rapid and substantial action is required if we are to mitigate these impacts. That is why more than 120 countries, including Canada, have now made commitments to move to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.  

While Canada’s GHG emissions have stabilized, we have not yet seen any significant decline in emissions. It’s time to change that.

Meeting a net-zero target is challenging, but achievable. While there are many different potential pathways to net-zero, all have wind energy, solar energy, and energy storage at their core. And that’s where the Canadian Renewable Energy Association comes in.

Canada has abundant solar and wind energy resources, more than enough to fully decarbonize our electricity grid—and to greatly expand it, allowing clean electricity to substitute for fossil fuels in transportation, buildings, and heavy industry.

Why renewables

Putting wind energy, solar energy, and energy storage at the centre of Canada’s energy transition represents the most affordable and positive path forward for Canada’s electricity future.

It will also bring significant economic benefits through local investment and job creation, plus direct payments to homeowners, small businesses, and municipalities in rural and urban areas of Canada, including Indigenous communities.

For all these reasons, wind energy, solar energy, and energy-storage technologies are well positioned to play a critical role in boosting Canada’s economic and climate recovery.

Investments made now will provide immediate benefits in 2021, when we really need them, and long-lasting effects for many years to come, benefitting our children and grandchildren.

CanREA’s Spring Forward Conference

So how can Canada successfully capitalize on this opportunity to achieve both economic recovery and climate change mitigation? 

Find out more at the Canadian Renewable Energy Association (CanREA)’s Spring Forward event, April 28 and 29, 2021.

This virtual conference will bring together prominent and insightful speakers from around the world and across Canada with expertise in wind, solar, and energy-storage technologies, including their economic impacts.

The post Recharging Canada’s Economy with Renewables appeared first on HiveInnovates.

Pamela Snively

Chief Data & Trust Officer, TELUS

Nadim Jamal

Director of TELUS Insights & Smart Cities

With an estimated 31 million smartphone users in Canada, our mobile devices have become an essential part of our lives. But what if our phones collectively could improve health care, make our cities more efficient, and help manage pandemics? They can, thanks to TELUS Insights.

TELUS powers more than nine million devices on its network, which covers 98 percent of the populated areas of the country. With those millions of devices moving through our towns and cities, there’s a massive amount of data that can be used responsibly to provide significant benefits to society.

“Ensuring the privacy and trust of our customers is core to our business,” says Pamela Snively, Chief Data and Trust Officer at TELUS. “We knew that we had data that could contribute social benefits to improve the lives of Canadians while providing useful commercial applications, too.”

TELUS built a rigorous data governance process and trust model that considers the ethical implications of any data analytics project, and it’s the only telecommunications company in Canada to achieve Privacy by Design certification, for its Insights platform.

Demystifying data

TELUS has long analyzed its network data for internal purposes to develop and improve products and services. Now, through its industry-leading TELUS Insights service, it can harness accurate, near real-time data drawn from its network as devices move around and connect to different cellular towers. This data is de-identified and aggregated — meaning that it contains no identifying or personal information and can’t be traced back to an individual — and can improve society by helping governments and their agencies, businesses, and non-profit organizations make informed decisions.

“There’s tremendous promise in using data to find solutions to some of society’s most pressing problems,” says Snively. “For example, data analysis could have very positive results for our health care system. It could help us find effective treatments for diseases and also enables us to deliver health care more efficiently. Data-driven decisions will make businesses more efficient, and could enable municipalities to better manage civic infrastructure, including where to build roads and hospitals.”

TELUS Insights began as a consulting service to understand an organization’s challenges and problems. However, as the program scaled up and more organizations recognized its value, TELUS added an API — a user-friendly computing interface that users can interact with to view dashboards and generate reports.

The launch of Data for Good

Supporting communities across Canada is important to TELUS. When the COVID-19 pandemic began, the company recognized it had an immediate — and meaningful — role to play. “We viewed our massive amount of de-identified and aggregated network mobility data as a planeload of N95 masks,” says Nadim Jamal, Director of TELUS Insights and Smart Cities. “We have a responsibility to leverage that data, while respecting privacy, to help public health officials and researchers battle the pandemic.”

In April, TELUS launched the Data for Good program, making it possible for health authorities and qualified academic researchers to use de-identified data from TELUS Insights at no charge to measure progress and assess additional opportunities to help stop the spread of COVID-19. TELUS also provides training and ongoing support, and the program has since won a global privacy innovation award.

In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, public health authorities are using data insights from TELUS to better understand traffic patterns — how people are moving through the city, how far they travel from their home neighbourhoods, and where they congregate. “This allows government and public health officials to measure the effectiveness of public health orders,” says Jamal. “COVID-19 has forced the government to adopt new, near real-time solutions in order to answer specific challenges related to the pandemic, such as comparing travel patterns to historic levels and where to deploy resources. It’s opened their eyes to the possibilities of how data can be used to help find solutions for other challenges.”

Leveraging the power of near real-time data to create safer communities

According to Jamal, many organizations are using survey data that in some cases is several years old to make decisions on how to spend tens of millions of dollars on infrastructure. TELUS Insights removes decision-making by assumption and replaces it with robust data that’s representative of current realities.

For example, the City of Revelstoke, BC was relying on census population data that was several years old and didn’t account for the large number of seasonal and temporary residents and visitors who draw upon city services and housing. Data provided by TELUS Insights showed that the city’s population in December 2018 peaked at 14,750 — almost double the number from the Canadian census. For the city to get this near real-time data any other way would have been both expensive and time-consuming.

“Access to the right actionable insights plays a critical role in helping address key issues in our communities, and ultimately can help create safer, more efficient cities,” says Jamal.

By way of example, The City of Edmonton, AB wanted to measure average traffic speed through residential neighbourhoods. Instead of spending millions of dollars to place sensors around the city and monitor them, it analyzed insights from TELUS’ mobility network to create a baseline on speeds in a particular neighbourhood and then compared speeds when limits were changed. This enabled decision-makers to be more precise in its understanding of where policy changes should be made, and whether or not they were having their desired effect.

“Our clients are amazed when they see what the power of our network capability can do. And the infrastructure is already there,” says Jamal. “With robust privacy considerations and safeguards in place, data can be used for good. We’re just beginning to see the tremendous benefits that smart cities can offer to make our lives better and safer, and one of the critical enablers of this will be analyzing data in a responsible way.”

The post Save the World — One Data Insight at a Time appeared first on HiveInnovates.

ABB leads the way for sustainable tech, supporting five key areas of a city’s infrastructure: buildings, transportation, data centres, water, and industry.

Urgent action is needed to combat climate change, as it poses a threat to both human health and our planet — and the pressure will only increase.

Today’s global population of 7.8 billion is expected to expand to 9.7 billion by 2050, according to the United Nations. And by then, about 80 percent of people will live in cities, placing ever more stress on water, food, energy, and transport systems. This urbanization will create the need to burn more fossil fuels for transportation and increase the demand for energy — all contributing to global warming, says Eric Deschenes, Country Managing Director and Head of ABB’s Electrification Business in Canada.

The key to sustainability: smart cities

Deschenes says that a key to sustainability is the creation of smart cities. “Without smart cities, we aren’t going to be able to move the needle in terms of what a city can do to avoid a large carbon footprint. The war against global warming will be won or lost at the city level,” he says, adding that smart cities are needed to address three global trends: urbanization, increased energy demand, and digitalization.

Smart cities deliver value

Smart cities are a continuously-evolving ecosystem, empowering individuals to live, work, and move in a safer, smarter, and more sustainable way. Deschenes says they require political courage, with leaders bold enough to pass legislation and create forward-thinking initiatives. He cites the many Canadian cities moving ahead with light rail transit.

Indeed, Deschenes believes that Canada is the ideal place to develop the innovations that will drive smart cities. “In Canada, 81 percent of citizens live in cities — so, we’re already living in the future. We’re also one of the top countries in green electricity, as about two thirds of what we generate is through hydroelectricity,” he says. He adds that Canada is also a country of buildings, which demand smart solutions to curb energy use, such as mall escalators that will only run when needed.

Investment in the world’s future

As a technology leader, ABB focuses on areas where it can make the biggest impact: reducing carbon emissions, preserving resources, and promoting social progress. In fact, ABB recently announced its commitment to reaching carbon neutrality in its own operations by 2030. It’s also working with its customers and suppliers to implement sustainable practices across its value chain and the lifecycle of its products and solutions.

With its end-to-end portfolio of solutions, ABB Electrification supports the five key areas that speak to the heart of a city’s critical infrastructure: buildings, transportation, data centres, water, and industries. ABB is leading the way in Canada for sustainable technology, from large-scale transit projects like the Finch West LRT — where ABB will deliver equipment to ensure reliable power for Toronto’s new light rail line, supporting 46,000 daily passengers — to smart building solutions like Nexus®Pro, which allows building owners to let a smart emergency lighting system manage itself to reduce monitoring, testing times, and costs.

“A key part of our sustainability strategy is to contribute actively to a low-carbon society, in line with the Paris Agreement and following the guidelines of the Science Based Targets initiative,” says Deschenes. ABB has committed itself to setting science-based targets in the coming months.

“We can’t see it as an expense. We need to see it as an investment,” says Deschenes. “Investment in smart infrastructure is crucial to make cities sustainable. Smart cities are necessary to reverse the climate change crisis and to enhance the quality of life for the next generation.”

The post Canada Is Leading the Way to Smart Cities appeared first on HiveInnovates.

What do buildings, electric vehicles, and batteries have in common in the fight to decarbonize our electricity system? Toronto-based firm Peak Power is answering this question by harnessing the potential of AI.

The transition to a clean-energy future will involve reimagining how different pieces of the electrical grid work together — and Peak Power believes that its unique optimization of buildings, electric vehicles (EVs), and battery energy storage have the power to radically disrupt the energy sector.

“The problem with the electricity grids virtually everywhere in the world is that they’re overbuilt for moments of peak demand, which can occur just a few hours each year,” says Matthew Sachs, COO of Peak Power. “Imagine if highways were built to accommodate rush hour traffic on Thanksgiving weekend, and those highways were empty most of the time. That’s effectively what’s going on with energy systems — since, of course, traffic is considered tolerable, but blackouts aren’t.”

Building bridges to modernize the energy sector

The solution proposed by Peak Power draws on the alignment of real estate, energy, and transportation partners to forecast grid needs and optimize grid-connected assets. Specifically, the company is developing and testing software that transforms distributed energy resources (DERs) like electric vehicles, batteries, solar power, and even entire buildings into energy nodes that respond to real-time demands from the grid.

The key, says Peak Power, is effectively using and deploying DERs like batteries. “I feel that batteries will revolutionize the energy industry the same way refrigerators revolutionized the milk industry,” says Sachs. “When you add storage to any commodity distribution model, you fundamentally change the economics of that model. And the more storage you have embedded in the grid, the more renewables you can have, since one of the main arguments against solar and wind is that they’re intermittent power sources.”

From electric vehicle to mobile power source

EVs aren’t just fun to drive — they can also generate income for drivers when used as a mobile power source. Peak Power is currently running a vehicle-to-grid pilot in Toronto, which brings together transportation, buildings, and energy sectors to test the viability of treating EVs as mobile power plants. In this project, EV drivers are paid when they park their cars in designated spots and plug into bi-directional chargers — that is, those capable of not only charging the batteries, but also discharging them into the building’s power system. When Peak Power’s software predicts a grid event, the energy stored within connected cars is then discharged energy into the host building, offsetting demand on the grid.

It’s one of the largest demonstration projects of its kind in the world, and it could provide significant insight for a future where everybody drives EVs and millions of cars could be plugged into the grid at once. And the system, which is managed by artificial intelligence that analyzes data to predict demand, is only getting smarter.

Electric vehicles as part of a transactive grid

Alongside its innovative vehicle-to-grid approach, Peak Power leverages two major approaches to modernize energy management for commercial real estate: energy storage and building optimization.

It’s developed an energy dashboard that provides visibility into how the building is operating, as well as allowing monitors to send notifications to building operators on how to run the building more efficiently. This not only reduces energy bills for building owners, but also minimizes their overall greenhouse gas emissions.

Having such a system in place also helps insulate building owners against the economic impact of increasingly unpredictable extreme weather events, which place high demands on the grid and can skyrocket energy costs. Peak Power’s services allow building owners to put sustainability on their balance sheet through energy savings. 

These approaches leverage the firm’s main areas of strength: forecasting and optimization. A data-driven resource economy will be crucial for smart cities, and moving from buzzwords to viable energy solutions requires innovative, forward-looking expertise.

In other words, gathering data is one thing, but knowing what to do with it is another beast entirely. And that’s the niche Peak Power has carved for itself: turning the vast amounts of data made accessible by smart technologies into actionable changes for sustainable cities.

The post How to Disrupt the Energy Sector with AI Optimization appeared first on HiveInnovates.