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Power.House – Alectra Brings Residential Micro-grid Solution to Ontario

In 2016, Alectra became the first Canadian utility to deploy a Virtual Power Plant comprised of distributed residential solar storage technology.  Supported by the Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO)’s Conservation Fund, the pioneering project coined “Power.House” sought to explore the potential for utility owned, customer sited distributed energy resources to be intelligently controlled to solve network level issues throughout the broader distribution system. 

Based on the initial success of the pilot, Alectra and the IESO embarked on a feasibility study to evaluate the potential for mass adoption of the technology in Ontario’s Southern York Region, focused on analyzing costs, benefits (including customer savings, transmission/distribution deferral benefits, and Ancillary Services market participation), technical capabilities, and key considerations associated with aggregating a large-scale fleet of solar storage assets to deliver both customer and grid value.

Join Alectra and Burns & McDonnell as we focus on providing an overview of the pilot, along with the key insights learned from the study, highlighted by actual system performance data. 

Presenters

Ahsan Upal | Burns & McDonnell

Ahsan Upal has worked in the utilities sector for over 17 years in Canada and the US, in senior leadership roles with major utilities, consulting firms and transformer manufacturers. He has led some of the largest regional and national infrastructure projects in power, pipelines and telecommunication, and sits on the Energy and Environmental and Electrification Policy Committees at Ontario and Calgary Chambers and often speaks at IEEE, CIGRE, CEA and other industry conferences.

Chrissy Carr | Burns & McDonnell

Ms. Carr graduated from the University of Kansas with a BSEE specializing in Telecommunications. Ms. Carr is a professional engineer in the utility telecommunications industry with 26 years of experience. She specializes in large scale turnkey networks for electric utilities. She presently serves as Client Strategy Director in Burns & McDonnell’s Telecommunications and Network Engineering Department. Ms. Carr’s experience in telecommunications includes fiber optic systems, microwave radio, land mobile radio (UHF/VHF), and wide area networks which includes MPLS and SONET.

Neetika Sathe | Director, Advanced Planning at Alectra Inc.

Neetika Sathe is Director, Advanced Planning at Alectra Inc. Her role in the organization is to identify, analyze and develop leading-edge innovative technologies and business opportunities. Prior to joining Alectra, Neetika was the Chief Marketing Manager at Nissan Canada responsible for the launch of the Nissan LEAF in Canada.

She serves on the board of several industry associations such as SmartGrid Canada and Electric Mobility Canada, including Chairing the Board of NSERC Energy Storage Technology (NEST) Network. Neetika was recognized by Energy Storage North America with the 2016 Champion Award for her leadership and exceptional achievement in advancing energy storage technology.

Neetika has a Masters degree in Physics from Panjab University, followed by an MBA from McMaster University.

 

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