Capitalizing on renewable energy

Berwick Electric Commission applies for an off-peak institutional rate

The wind doesn’t always blow, and the sun doesn’t always shine, so storage capacity is key to capitalizing on renewable energy.

The Berwick Electric Commission (BEC) has applied to the Nova Scotia Utility and Review Board (UARB) for an off-peak institutional rate for facilities with significant battery storage capacity. The BEC currently has no rate for such service.

BEC superintendent Donald Regan said the rate would apply to the Kings Mutual Century Centre (KMCC), which is owned and operated by the Berwick and District Community Association; and the Berwick town hall building. In the future, it could apply to other buildings served by the BEC that have energy storage capability.

“With more renewables coming, storage is going to become more important,” Regan said. “We all have to learn more about it.”

The application is related to the Power Forward Challenge, a project involving Berwick and its partner, the Alba Nova consortium.

The consortium is made up of Equilibrium Engineering

Berwick Mayor Don Clarke says the town is excited over the potential future benefits of partnering with the Alba Nova consortium on the Power Forward Challenge.

of Kentville; StorTera, an Edenborough, Scotland, firm developing battery storage technology; and Dr. Lukas Swan of Dalhousie University’s Renewable Energy Storage Laboratory.

“The Alba Nova project will be able to model different control strategies using those two larger batteries and produce a report that could be quite useful to us,” Regan said. “We will generally use these assets to try to flatten our load curve.”

He said it isn’t likely that they will be able to achieve everything they’d like to with the two 500 kWh industrial battery storage units and the 10 residential 20 kWh units, each with five to seven kW of rooftop solar power, that have been installed as part of the project. However, they will definitely help.

“If we could build a little more storage into our system, hopefully, we will be a more attractive customer to other suppliers of energy,” Regan said.

The aim of the exercise is to develop operating algorithms that provide benefits to both the engaging customers and the BEC. Cloud-based, artificial intelligence is being employed to control and refine the operation of the battery storage assets.