At a gala dinner held last week in Toronto, Lakeland Holding Ltd. won the Electricity Distributors Association’s 2022 Innovation Excellence Award, recognizing the innovative SPEEDIER and DEMOCRASI projects.
Lakeland was judged on Concept Originality, Value, Practicality, Delivery, Measurable impact on customers and/or businesses, Sustainability and Applicability, against other excellent innovative projects.
“This award is an achievement for all Lakeland companies who worked together for over three years creating one of Canada’s most innovative microgrids. Innovation creates so many obstacles with frustrations, and our incredible staff persevered,” stated Chris Litschko, CEO.
This innovation project was led by Bracebridge Generation utilizing their solar and battery storage, affiliate Lakeland Power’s distribution network, with Lakeland Networks’ fibre communications, the Town of Parry Sound sites, and the Government of Canada’s funding programs. Bracebridge Generation, Lakeland Power and Lakeland Networks are all part of the Lakeland Holding group of companies.
“We have received interest from other municipalities to expand this project into their communities,” noted Vince Kulchycki, COO of Lakeland Holding. “This is a testament to the overall success of the project and the urgent need to deploy these technologies to meet Canada’s Emissions Reduction plan, announced at the 2022 GLOBE Forum conference.”
Project SPEEDIER arose from the need to assist the Town of Parry Sound in meeting its goals on becoming one of the first net-zero communities in Canada by installing a microgrid consisting of solar power, battery storage system and smart switching, in order to reduce electricity demand. The project also demonstrates the ability to increase electricity reliability, defer costly upgrades, help speed the adoption of electrical vehicles and gives residents greater control over how they use energy.
DEMOCRASI utilizes assets from SPEEDIER, collaborating with partners Opus One Solutions and Kiwi Power to build an optimized DER (Distributed Energy Resource) management system to safely bid electricity into the Ontario IESO (Independent Electricity System Operator) markets. This solution provides the utility with visibility into the DER activity on Lakeland Power’s network and reduces issues caused by the intermittent nature of this type of generation.
As part of these projects, Bracebridge Generation worked with Georgian College’s Research and Innovation department to develop a Green House Gas (GHG) Emission reporting system that identifies and tracks GHG reductions that come from deploying DER assets into a community such as Parry Sound. This baseline calculator is constantly being updated and developed to potentially assist all facets of municipal and business environments as they measure GHG emissions against their goals.
Left to right: Bryan Ingram (Bracebridge Generation Operations Manager), Peter Ewald (Project Technical Lead), Marjorie MacDonald (Project Process Lead), Chris Litschko (Chief Executive Officer)