Remote communities across Canada’s far northern provinces rely on diesel and bunker-fuel generators for electricity. A dramatic change for the better may be in store – if efforts to fully realize a wind power-battery energy storage microgrid come to fruition.
The conceptual designers of IceGrid – a university marine research scientist, a city councilor and business analyst, and an entrepreneur – recently won the first prize at the CanInfra Challenge, an open competition that sought to bring forth ideas from local community residents deemed to have the greatest potential to transform lives and livelihoods for people living throughout Canada.
Energy – how best to produce and distribute it – looms large for Canadian residents, businesses and communities. That’s especially true in remote towns and cities in Canada’s far north, where electricity rates are the highest in the nation and quality of service suffers. Their reliance on diesel generating stations also comes with costs to human and environmental health and quality, said IceGrid team member Brett Favaro, a marine research scientist at Memorial University of Newfoundland’s Fisheries and Marine Institute.
IceGrid and the CanInfra Challenge
CanInfra Challenge judges awarded the IceGrid team first prize for their proposal to replace diesel-fuel generating plants with a grid-connected, wind power-battery energy storage microgrid, first in Iqaluit, the capital of Nunavut, and then throughout the northwestern Canadian province. Microgrid Knowledge spoke with Favaro and Brett Halliday, director of the BCG (Boston Consulting Group) Center for Canada’s Future, which organized the CanInfra Challenge competition and conference, to learn more.
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