Nova Scotia Power launches smart charging pilot in bid to utilize more renewable energy

Source: Emma Jarratt · ELECTRIC AUTONOMY CANADA · | October 7, 2020

Utility will pay customers to install electric vehicle smart chargers as it moves to incorporate visibility, more capacity and lower costs into the province’s grid

Source: Electric Autonomy Canada

Nova Scotia Power is launching an electric vehicle smart-charging pilot program for household customers with the promise that it will put participants in the green in more ways than one. In return, for two years, the utility gets full control of the charger.

For the tidy profit of $150, approximately 100 homeowners across Nova Scotia can be part of the province’s first smart-charging initiative — a program that brings together renewable energy generation, EV charging and integrated monitoring technology.

“We hear time and again how electric vehicle owners wished they could charge up their EV when the wind is blowing or when the sun is shining with clean, carbon-free electrons,” says Jérémie Bernardin, president of the Electric Vehicle Association of Atlantic Canada. “The data collected from smart-grid pilot programs like these have the potential to set the stage for those exact ideas.”

EV owners compensated

The Smart Grid Nova Scotia program is one of several pilots that have been rolled out across Canada to test how EV charging may be leveraged to encourage more efficient energy consumption and clean energy generation. What makes it unique is that it also compensates EV owners for their valuable data.

“The objective of the program really is to demonstrate the benefits that distributed energy sources can offer the utility and the customers,” says Sanjeev Pushkarna, senior program manager of Smart Grid Nova Scotia in an interview with Electric Autonomy Canada.