Nova Scotia Power is looking to spend $4.3 million to find out if customers are prepared to save money on their power bills while helping the environment.
The utility wants to participate in a regional pilot project to help manage the electricity grid and use wind power more effectively by using "smart grid" technology.
Here’s how it would work.
When the wind is not blowing, the utility wants to be able to shut off customers’ hot water heaters, instead of what they do today, which is switching to another fuel source like coal.
The idea behind the program "is to save energy and increase the use of renewables," said Nova Scotia Power spokeswoman Patty Faith, on Friday.
The study will select up to 1,500 residential customers and 150 commercial customers to participate in the test. About 750 will be in Nova Scotia.
Faith said the customers and the areas in this province to be tested will not be decided until the expenditure is approved by the Nova Scotia Utility and Review Board.
If approved, Nova Scotia Power would install special devices on water heaters that communicate with the electrical grid. The devices would tell the appliances to turn on or off, depending on the conditions of the system and the amount of renewable energy available.
Homeowners shouldn’t notice if their hot water or space heater was turned off, Faith said.
The pilot project will evaluate, "the customers’ role and their acceptance of utility load control for the purposes of renewable energy integration," the power company said in its application to the board.
Called PowerShift Atlantic, the $32-million project was first announced in July in Fredericton when the federal government announced it would provide $15.9 million through the federal government’s Clean Energy Fund.
"The challenges with wind generation are the variability and uncertainty of production levels to match customer demand. If proven commercially viable, load control, as an ancillary service, may provide an effective means of dealing with wind energy intermittency," the utility’s application said.
"This is a unique opportunity to look at how you can take that technology and use it to balance intermittent power like wind," said Faith.
Participants in the study besides Nova Scotia Power are NB Power, Maritime Electric Co. Ltd. of Prince Edward Island, the University of New Brunswick and the power commission in Saint John, N.B.
http://www.thechronicleherald.ca/Business/1206040.html
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Note
I effectively already do this. I have an Aube T1040 timer which turns my hot water heater on for two hours in the early morning and that is enough hot water for me for the rest of the day. With this and other power saving tactics, my daily power usage was down to 7.2 kWh on my last power bill.
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