Current Affairs

Issue 60 - December 2023

A year in review with Francis Bradley

After this November’s Powering Partnerships Symposium and board meeting, Electricity Canada settles into December, reflects on an incredible year and prepares for what is on the horizon! Current Affairs sat down with President and CEO Francis Bradley for a 2023 recap.

Hi Francis, thank you for joining us. This year has already been a standout, beginning with the Federal Budget’s investments of electrification and ending with the draft Clean Energy Regulations. What has been the most exciting thing to see?

I think from my perspective it would be the first of those, the federal budget and its investment. This is the first time we've actually seen real and substantial support for clean electricity investments from the Government of Canada. This is absolutely historic! We’ve been suggesting for many years now that decarbonization through electrification is a public good. It's a national priority and it’s an expansion on the electricity system to meet this national aspiration. As a public good, the additional costs relating to meeting our greenhouse gas reduction ambitions should be borne by society as a whole, not just by electricity customers, because the electricity sector is expected to decarbonize the rest of the economy. As a result, we need to look at how we're funding this, and fund it appropriately.

One in every $8 of new spending in the budget is aimed at clean electricity investments. That's a great story. However, this is not a silver bullet. But it is a start. It’s a very important first step and it shows a willingness on the part of the federal government to put its money where its mouth is, to use the words of Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault on the night of the budget.

We’ve just hosted one of our biggest events of the year at Powering Partnerships highlighting “The Future Of…” with topics discussing the North, technology, artificial intelligence, transportation, electricity, and the future of people, what is your take on the future of Electricity Canada as an organization?

As an association, we've been the nucleus of the electricity sector for more than 132 years. I've been here for 37 of those years. What I've seen in my time here is that we’ve been successful as an organization because we’re able to repeatedly reinvent ourselves and, like the industry we represent, we are nimble in that way.

When I began here at Electricity Canada, or should I say when I began here two name changes ago when we were the Canadian Electrical Association, our primary focus was operational: it was information exchange of a technical nature and technical research. Now, we’ve evolved over time and we’ve changed as the needs of the industry have changed in terms of what they need from a national association. Consequently, we’ve become an advocacy organization. Since our last strategic plan, we're increasingly now focused really on the future – on emerging issues and on the policy, legislative and regulatory changes that are going to be required to enable that.

I think Powering Partnerships really was a great example of that future focus. It was the culmination of the changes that we've been bringing to the association for the past several years in terms of making sure that we were clearly focused on the future.

What are the biggest challenges and opportunities for the electricity sector in 2024?

It’s going to be all about reliability, affordability and decarbonization. Certainly, in the year ahead, but not just in the year ahead. In fact, it will continue to be about reliability, affordability and decarbonization out to 2050 – and how we balance those three things. We need to work out what are the policies that we need in order to reach our aspirations of a net zero economy in 2050.

So, 2024, is the next step in all of this is that we have to figure out how we get good projects built and how we get them built faster.

We also need to simplify the approval process and get rid of overlapping processes and we need to get rid of duplication between different levels of government.

Furthermore, to do all this we're going to need people to achieve the energy transition. Unfortunately, I see nothing in 2024 that suggests that we'll suddenly have a solution to the skills and talent shortage. There are a lot of people seeking to address this problem, including our members and our partners at Electricity Human Resources Canada.

The other thing that keeps me worrying is supply chains. The delays for critical equipment is actually growing – I'm hearing this from a quite a few of our members that those delays are not getting shorter. There is also competition from other sectors that have very similar needs and are also growing such as transportation, telecommunication. And there’s competition from the U.S. thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act.

In 2024 while these challenges will absolutely be a high priority for us. However, but they are also opportunities. In fact, I think I think there are huge opportunities when we're talking about building that cleaner, brighter and better future.

We have the opportunity to develop and implement new technologies and new solutions that are going to result in making life better through a cleaner economy, more comfort, more convenience for customers. And we also have this opportunity to do so equitably, and use the massive growth that we're going to see in the electricity sector to be the means for reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples as our sector increasingly welcomes them as partners.

Switching gears here, you are almost at the 90th episode of the Flux Capacitor. Who would be your dream guest when you crack 100 and why?

If I could use my Flux Capacitor time machine, I’d go back to 1891 and I'd bring in J.J. Wright, the founder of this organization. I’d put him in the passenger seat of the DeLorean and bring them to the future so that he'd look around and I suspect his initial reaction would be amazement at all that has happened and how different society is because of the electrification. On the other hand, maybe he'd be disappointed coming from 1891 and jumping out to 2023 and looking around and wondering where's the flying car?

If I had to pick somebody who was a living person… I would get Bill Gates as a guest on the podcast. He would be absolutely fascinating to talk about generally because of all that he's done throughout his career and the massive impact on a lot of the technologies that he's brought forward. I'd like to really unpack with him the book he wrote a couple of years ago, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster.

It was a fascinating read, and while it was about the impending climate disaster, and it was very hopeful. I don't know if somebody's got a friend that happens to know Bill Gates, but there you go.

Electricity Canada’s annual symposium, Powering Partnerships is on the horizon!

This event unites members from coast-to-coast-to-coast with CEOs and senior executives, corporate partners, electricity sector stakeholders and elected officials to discuss industry hot topics and learn from keynote speakers. Current Affairs sits down with Vice President of Communications and Sustainability Julia Muggeridge to chat about this year’s approach discussing the future of the electricity sector.

Hi Julia, thank you for joining us. Powering Partnerships is the biggest event of the year for Electricity Canada. What makes this symposium special compared to previous years?

Powering Partnerships was conceptualized five years ago to bring together government stakeholders, corporate partners, and member companies. This event is planned and executed entirely by a small team at Electricity Canada. If you attend Powering Partnerships, you’ll see five years of lessons learned which has evolved into top-notch programming, a beautiful award ceremony and lots of networking opportunities.

How did this year’s theme, “the future of” come to be and what do you think it means for the industry?

Like most good ideas at Electricity Canada, this one started with an article from a colleague! There was an article in the New York Times about Artificial Intelligence, and it noted that, while AI can be frightening, it can also be used for the betterment of humankind. I began thinking about how all of the different futures we reflect on at Electricity Canada are inherently good. They are good because people – who will shape the future – are good. With this optimistic approach, our team has worked to shape an agenda that sees the good in technology, in transportation, in AI but most importantly, in people.

This year you've moved from panels with industry professionals to individual talks by thought leaders. Who is on the guest list and what will they bring?

We are delighted to be welcoming six keynote speakers with a variety of backgrounds to Powering Partnerships. The guest list includes experts in electricity (of course!), technology, transportation, and artificial intelligence. Because the focus of the day is how people interact with future technologies and transportation, we have bookended the day with two keynotes focused on people. Our opening keynote is focused on the North and how we can better collaborate with and think about the people in the north. Our final keynote will bring together the days event and talk about the future of…. People: where do we fit into the future, at work, at home, interacting with technology. But don’t take my word for it- see our full list of speakers here!

The symposium agenda has six interactive keynote presentations: the future of the North, the future of technology, the future of artificial intelligence, the future of transportation, the future of electricity, and the future of people. Do you think we are ready for what comes next?

I’m hoping at the end of the day on November 21^st, we’ll have a clear picture of where people fit into the next 30 – 50 years. But, as you’ve probably noted, I tend to take an optimistic approach to these things.

What is one takeaway you want the audience to leave with after the Symposium?

The future is electric, bright and good.

For more information on Powering Partnerships visit Electricity Canada’s website.

Electricity Distribution in Canada

On September 20-21^st, Electricity Canada’s Distribution Council met in Calgary Alberta for their annual face to face meeting. Distribution Council focuses on the issues surrounding bringing electricity at safe voltage directly to Canadian homes and businesses. As the last stop before electricity end-use, distribution utilities are responsible for connecting and maintaining electricity supply.

Current Affairs sat down with Electricity Canada’s Alex Kent, Director of Director of Distribution and Regulatory Affairs to learn more.

Hi Alex, thanks for joining us. Can you talk a little bit about the functions of a distribution utility and their importance in our net zero future?

The distribution utility owns and operates the wires that bring electricity to your home or business. That’s why they’re called in the industry the “last mile provider”.

Transmission lines take energy from generators to substations of the grid and the distribution grid takes energy from the substations to you. The specific role distribution has in the net zero future is that it supplies the non-emitting or zero emitting electricity that other industrial sectors or sectors at large can decarbonize by switching from a carbon power source to an electrical one. So, an electric vehicle is powered by electricity, and delivered by the distribution grid.

How will electric vehicle adoption affect the grid and its customers?

In the simplest sense, it's going to require the transmission of more energy across the distribution grid, which will, in turn, will be called upon to make up the energy that was being supplied to the transportation sector by gasoline and diesel.

Another interesting impact is that every electric vehicle is also a giant battery, that can consume, store and supply energy. In theory, an electric vehicle plugged into my home when the power goes out because there's a blizzard, could supply electricity to my home so that I never actually lose power. There's a potential emergency reliability angle there.

There is also a possibility for peak shaving. You have low demand for electricity in the day because people are at work or at school doing something else other than running high intensity electrical appliances. The demand for electricity goes up around 5:00 or so when people get home for the day and they turn on their oven, their stove and their microwave. You don’t want everyone in the neighbourhood’s electric vehicles pulling a maximum charge at this time.

Some Electricity Canada members are pursuing or have even deployed ultra-low overnight charging, so in effect you get home from work, plug in your EV, but it doesn't start drawing charge from the electricity grid until midnight, when everything else has been shut off because people have gone to bed. This prevents the system from being overloaded, and this is important to the end customer because it helps them save on their electricity bill.

The past year we produced two reports giving guidance about regulation and building (Back to Bonbright and Build Things Faster). What are the key things regulators and government need to do as we ramp up building grid capacity?

With Back to Bonbright, our core finding was that regulators in one way or another use Bonbright principles for economic regulation. And these are essentially the rules by which the public interest is weighed versus a utilities proposal. What we found was that even given net zero, the fundamental rules on how to assess that something still works, but you must do it. Considering the federal government is the driver of net zero and net zero has cost implications to customers, the federal government in one way or another should support net zero transitions by utilities and those making the investments.

In our Build Things Faster report, we asked, “how can we build things faster” because in the experience of our members it takes five to ten years to get anything really permitted in Canada. If we have eight years to permit our project and build transmission lines, for example, that's going to take us three or four years to build it. Well, that's already 12 years to do all this, and we have already missed the net zero 2035 legal mandate. You can throw more money at the problem; it's just there's not enough time.

What is the biggest upcoming challenge for the distribution system?

In the past, there was very predictable amounts of load that was drawn by users of the distribution system, because nothing really changed. Because we're doing fuel switching, it starts to change very quickly and in unexpected ways. Who's going to buy an EV?
Is it going to happen equally, nicely evenly, across a whole city?

Now, there's almost certainly going to be socioeconomic groups that buy EVs first and they may or may not be concentrated in certain portions of the distribution grid. These portions of the grid would then likely need to be upgraded to capture this increased demand. We don't know what's happening or when things are going to happen. We only have best guesses and need to hope the regulator will approve the necessary work.

What are the big priorities for Distribution Council in 2024?

A focus of discussion has been the impact of electric vehicles on the grid, regulatory innovation and what it means to be customer centric in your operations. Another major topic has been grid resiliency. Extreme weather events keep happening more frequently and they keep getting more extreme. We are looking into what distribution utilities can do to plan for weather that is not like what it was and is getting worse.

Electricity Canada and U.S. Affairs

Many people don’t realize that there are over 31 transmission lines that connect U.S. and Canada, providing electricity to millions of Americans and Canadians. Working together, U.S. - Canada electricity trade and integration delivers a more resilient, clean and affordable system for everyone. Current Affairs sits down with Robin Yee, Manager of U.S. relations to connect the dots—or the transmission lines, as the case may be.

Hi Robin. Over 70 TWh of electricity flows across the U.S. Canada border, which represents a trade relationship of over $3 billion. What are the biggest concerns with US-Canada relations?

The biggest concern with Canada – U.S. relations is that both countries have set really ambitious climate goals and are going through huge energy resource mix transitions.

We've come from this phase where electricity companies had more ability and longer timelines to plan and build and construct as needed, and now we're having to transition and do a lot of changes much more rapidly.

Making sure that the grid remains reliable while we're going through this is a completely different challenge. We are trying to bring together completely new and innovative technologies to work together in ways that we haven't done at this scale and, we're trying to do that while also working towards non-emitting goals. Trying to do those both in parallel is intertwined and complex -that is really the key challenge.

This summer we've been facing real challenges with extreme weather. How have both countries worked together to make the grid more resilient?

Both countries have a long history of working together to keep the grid reliable, and the cross-border relationship is a big part of that. This plays out in different ways.

There's a long history of mutual aid in the case of outages. Crews will cross the border to go and assist neighbors with bringing the lights back on. Another part of it that's built into the system, is simply just having the Internet interconnections between the different regions, it builds resilience. For example, if there is a cold snap in one area or a storm, you have the ability to import energy from another region. This can help meet increased demands or provide alternate supplies rather than having to overbuild in one area. So that's a really interesting compliment between Canada and the United States, that's part of the reason why energy often will flow North and South. It's because we have different things to offer each other and that can be used to strengthen both countries.

There are also forums and groups and councils that work together to make sure that we are looking ahead and preparing for serious incidents or responding together as an industry.

How does our net zero future come into play with U.S. relations?

Well, both countries right now are working towards net zero futures or non-emitting goals and making sure we work together is important. There's new policy being introduced in the States at the federal level and at the State level. We're also seeing policy come up in Canada and regulations related to that and electricity is going to play a huge role, not only for reducing emissions as an industry, but also for supporting other industries and sectors that will need to ship the energy sources they rely on.

Tell us about the North American Electric Reliability Corporation and Electricity Canada’s work with the organization?

NERC or the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, is the regulator for reliability across North America and the integrated electric grid. It is a really impressive and complex organization that develops reliability standards. This needs to be done at a very technical level and it’s informed by industry experience, but it also has to be regulated and enforced in appropriate ways.

Electricity Canada works to support a strong relationship with NERC for our Canadian members and entities, making sure that Canadian perspectives are represented. There has been recent work on, weather issues or issues that are influenced by Canadian geography.

Making sure that there is good representation and co-operation going on in that, we're providing input into the development and direction of policy is important for NERC.

NERC holds one of its Board meetings per year in Canada and the most recent was in Ottawa. There was about 100 people from NERC and across industry and government representation who participate, to talk about what the big challenges are in electricity reliability and how we're working to solve them. It's not easy to find answers, but NERC does a lot of assessments or studies which can be really which can be resources for navigating the transition.

What file are you most looking forward to tackling in your work?

I think really what's most interesting is making sure that the right people are talking to each other because electricity so integrated, it affects so many different aspects of society. You have government, you have policymakers and regulators, you have industry, and you have different needs from the users who are now starting to become part of that. As people generate their own electricity, we’re trying to support the conversations between all these different groups, and I think that’s a really exciting and interesting challenge.

Why is the North American electricity relationship so important?

The electricity relationship is so important because it's the foundation of how we have built our society essentially across North America. And it really does depend on this cooperation across regions, which really leads to a strengthening and resilience and reliability for people who depend on electricity. When electricity was just coming more into society it was very regional and localized. Cooperation between different regions meant that instead of overbuilding in one area, you could work with your neighbor to balance things out and both of you could have the benefits of that. That has continued to be the case and it's by working together that we've been able to have the wonderful benefits of electricity in our society.

Electricity Generation in Canada

On July 12^th and 13^th, representatives from Electricity Canada’s Generation Council (G-Council) met in Calgary, Alberta for their annual face to face meeting. Generation Council focuses on electricity generation issues, particularly when it comes to energy integration, innovation, climate change mitigation and adaptation, environmental stewardship, and Indigenous affairs. Current Affairs sat down with Brittany Botting, Director of Generation to explore these issues and how they are currently impacting the sector. Hi Brittany, thank you for joining us!

The Federal Budget announced in March that there will be some incredible opportunities for more generation across Canada. What is going to be the biggest challenge to funding it?

I think the largest challenge is just the scale of investment that's required to meet the net zero by 2035 and 2050 targets. There is going to be a need for billions, if not trillions, of dollars of investment over the next three decades into not just the generation space, but also transmission and distribution to decarbonize the electricity grid not to mention meeting the electrification needs for the entire economy. The scale of the challenge is really enormous. It was very positive to see in Budget 2023 investments and support from the federal government to help electricity companies meet that challenge.

The biggest priority for G-Council in Electricity Canada’s business plan for Q1 was the Clean Electricity Regulations (CERs) which will give important guidance on how decarbonizing the grid will roll out. It's now Q3 and we still haven't seen the regulations. Do you think we'll see them soon? How do you prepare for regulations that haven't been released yet?

We do expect to see the Clean Electricity Regulations in the coming weeks. That is a signal that we have been consistently getting from government. Hopefully we will see at least a first draft of the regulations in August or September, because in terms of preparation, the more delay that there is in releasing the clear rules makes it a little bit more challenging for the sector to meet the 2035 objectives.

That said, I think it is more important that we have a workable rules that are flexible and actually reflect our current realities that the sector can then go ahead and implement. So, if the government is taking time to consider these regulations because they're so consequential, that's probably a good thing.

In terms of preparations, we do have enough of a frame, if you will, coming from the government that we're able to start having meaningful conversations with members to get an industry-wide perspective on what the CERs will mean. It gives us time to get our ducks in a row and figure out what is most important, and what values need to be reflected in the final CERs. Obviously, we all would love to see some numbers sooner rather than later, but given the framework that's out there already, there is some information to work from in order to start formulating a response.

Outside of the CERs and the federal budget, what is the biggest challenge in the generation world right now?

I think that goes back to the first question. It's the scale of the challenge and opportunity of meeting our 2035 and 2050 goals. Also in the 2023 Federal the sector received a lot of supportAs a result, a big focus of Generation Council is to make sure those supports can help us get to where we need to be going. That includes the Investment Tax Credits, but also targeted programming, the Canada Infrastructure Bank and everything in between.

What is the biggest opportunity?

The biggest opportunity is also the challenge, right? There's going to be a huge demand increase for electricity, double to triple by 2050. That is a huge and opportunity in and of itself for our members to gobble up a larger share of the energy market.

What project are you looking forward to working on with members the most?

Probably the CERs. These are going to be so consequential for how the sector is governed for the next 12-13 years. I'm excited to at least start tackling that with members.

What are those next steps?

Generation Council have decided a couple of things that we're going to do to start preparing for the CER response. One of that is developing a policy brief that lays out some recommendations that are industry wide to help put some positive options on the table for government. We're also developing common messaging that we are hoping the sector utilizes so that we can all be singing from the same song book.

Electricity Reliability in Canada

Electricity Canada’s upcoming Service Continuity report revealed some interesting data about the reliability of our electricity grid. From extreme weather events, to squirrel disruptions, all power interruptions, no matter how small, are recorded and categorized for utilities to find ways to minimize the impact to customers and maintain grid stability.

Current Affairs sat down with Dan Gent, Director of Transmission and Reliability and Lakshmi Venugopal, Data Analyst to talk about what they learned.

Hi Dan and Lakshmi, tell us a little bit about the Service Continuity report and the type of information collected.

DG: This report is going to cover 2022 and 2021. It’s really the meat and potatoes of reliability.

LV: There are five things that the report captures. The first is SAIFI (system average interruption frequency index) which will tell you the frequency of the outages in a given year and we have SAIDI (system average interruption duration index) which will tell you the duration of the outages in a given year.

CAIDI is about customer impact, the customer average interruption duration index. And then we have interactions per kilometer (IKM) and the customer hours of interruption per kilometer (CIKM).

Utilities use these reports to benchmark against other Canadian utilities and they develop programs for improvement. It shows how much you should be investing on a particular type of equipment that failed and what needs maintenance.

DG: They also use this report for rate filings with the regulators. They take the report and say, ‘Hey, this is what's happening in the industry in terms of outages, and this is how we're performing against the national average’. This gives them a case to adjust their rates to help improve their reliability.

LV: Our report also clearly indicates what the impact was of any given major weather event that utilities have experienced throughout the year. It will give out information such as how many hours has gone and how many customers were impacted because of that.

We’ve seen some intense storms in 2022 including a derecho right here in Ottawa as well as Hurricane Fiona in Nova Scotia. How was this affected this year’s data and what can we learn from it?

DG: We've seen last year that major weather events are increasing and this just highlighting it to a whole other level. Outages were led by three major events: the derecho, Hurricane Fiona and the pre-Christmas storm.

With over 220 million customer hours of interruption, it's the largest number of blackouts or outages since 1998. When you take out the major events, though, the numbers fall back to normal. And that’s the problem, when these events happened previously we’ve said, ‘Oh, it's a hundred-year storm’, but it's now happening every three years.

Besides major weather events, what causes the most power outages? Anything that would surprise us?

LV: Tree contact interruptions have increased by 27% from 2021 to 2022. Apart from major weather events, this is one of the key concerns that members have.

DG: It's trees falling on to the lines, tree branches, as well as trees hitting the lines or damaging other pieces of equipment like insulators or pole mounted transformers. One in five outages actually happen because of a tree. They have contributed over 90 million hours of interruptions.

For other causes, adverse weather might fluctuate depending on the year and equipment failure is generally up there too because it's an aging grid that is getting hit by these hundred-year storms every three years!

What do you want people to know about the reliability of our electricity grid?

DG: It’s still pretty damn good.

LV: Yeah, that’s exactly what the data says. If look at the index of reliability, it’s always been above 95%.

DG: Even with 220 million customer hours of interruption, the index of reliability is still 99.98% for 2022. I mean, there is there is a push for having 4 nines (99.99) but with what happened last year, I’ll take 99.98%.

Finally, how do squirrels impact the grid?

DG: Contrary to popular conspiracy theorists, squirrels do cause outages. They might be sitting on one piece of equipment, lean over, and then ZAP… You’ll lose power for a few minutes until there’s an automated recloser. They just get into places they shouldn’t be, and that’s what it comes down to.

Electricity Canada’s Service Continuity report will be available late July.

A year in review with Francis Bradley

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Electricity Canada’s annual symposium, Powering Partnerships is on the horizon!

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Electricity Distribution in Canada

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Electricity Canada and U.S. Affairs

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Electricity Generation in Canada

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Electricity Reliability in Canada

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A year in review with Francis Bradley

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Electricity Canada’s annual symposium, Powering Partnerships is on the horizon!

Other Stories

Electricity Distribution in Canada

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Electricity Canada and U.S. Affairs

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Electricity Generation in Canada

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Electricity Reliability in Canada

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