By Stephen Kishewitsch
The opportunities for development of new power systems in Canada are closely connected with the plans for urban development. Cities will shape the kind of power systems that are developed, their location, fuel sources, and, perhaps most interesting and rich with opportunity – how power systems are integrated with other types of urban infrastructure.
Although much of a city’s supply is produced outside its boundaries and funneled inwards, increasingly cities are looking to ensure more of their supply is generated locally. Many city residents want to ensure at the same time that power system infrastructure is part of a co-ordinated plan for development of a wide range of urban infrastructure including water, transportation and thermal energy. Power systems that are developed and operated in a fashion that’s closely tied to with local conditions are likely to be helpful at meeting grid management objectives for reliability and efficiency.
Urban preferences may introduce factors outside the traditional engineering considerations involved in planning power generation, including siting, fuel choice, design, etc. A growing metropolitan area may want power generation to facilitate its land use plans, or they may encourage industrial consumers to become self-generators, participants in load management, etc. Some have an interest in district energy systems. Generators looking for new markets are no doubt asking themselves how they might be able to support such options.
The following paragraphs attempt to summarize some of the major forces at work. First we examine forces that may be shaping the way the power sector interacts with the rest of the city. Later we look at the way that cities are finding they must plan, design and build their future. A related article looks a number of specific urban power initiatives, notably in Guelph and Toronto, and additional sidebars provide further details of interest.
A formative part of the picture in Ontario is the Places to Grow Act of 2005 that set targets for growth for a number of towns and cities in southern Ontario, partly as a measure to protect a greenbelt around the greater Toronto area, including the watershed recharge zone on the Oak Ridges Moraine. A number of cities and towns have been designated as growth areas under the Act and are looking at large population increases, and increases in density. The moderate-sized city of Guelph, east of Toronto, is slated for an additional 50,000 people by the Act’s target date of 2031, an increase of almost 50%. East Gwillimbury, a town of 23,000 an hour’s drive north of Toronto’s downtown, is looking at 90,000. Requirements like this have done a great deal to focus the minds of the city’s planners, and of its power utilities, on how to supply the new residents – along with the businesses – with the urban amenities they will need. Time was when the cities’ thinking might have ended with roads, and water and sewer connections, on the assumption that electrical power would just show up as needed. No longer. Power supply is now an integral part of the planning process in some cases, and the power utility can contribute in a major way to the function of the local energy planner.
East Gwillimbury, which does not even have its own power utility and depends on Hydro One, is planning a district energy system. (It is still in the earliest stages, no details are settled.)
“Integration” might be the watchword that best conveys how this is happening, in several ways:
• The city’s power utility increasingly serves as the city’s energy planning unit. Guelph has created a holding company, Guelph Municipal Holdings Inc., which includes Guelph Hydro Inc., and which institutionalizes the traditional, informally cooperative effort between power utility, the city’s Corporate Manager, Community Energy, Economic Development office and Planning Department.
• In fact, the local power utility is having to think increasingly like an economic development agency. “I have my economic development hat on more than I would ever have predicted,” said Rob Kerr, who was taken on two years ago in a new position as Guelph’s Corporate Manager – Community Energy. Toronto and Guelph both, for example, have eco-business zones, planned with a thermal grid as the physical basis for economic development. (See the companion story, “Getting supply close to load: How they’re doing it”.) These initiatives are part of a larger strategy of not just anticipating growth but encouraging economic development by building an infrastructure attractive to investors and businesses. A number of businesses considering locating in Guelph are headquartered in parts of the world where ready access to a thermal grid is a standard procedure.
To put it more explicitly, some energy utilities are adopting the view that their duties include being proactive agents of urban development, helping to market the city and its neighbourhoods, while also achieving environmental benefits.
• City planning, as it moves to include energy supply, is also moving down to the community level. A comprehensive community energy plan seems to be increasingly relevant. Such a plan often looks at a longer time horizon – at a minimum, to the Act’s 2031 target date, if not beyond. Planners like it because it reduces the surprise factor. “The days are long gone when, surprise, a project shows up in your neck of the woods because there’s an energy shortage,” said Barry Chuddy, Chief Executive Officer of Guelph Hydro Inc, in a telephone interview. “Energy planning is a big part of what Guelph is doing now – planning energy infrastructure as part and parcel of city’s growth objectives, along with the other infrastructure needs like roads. Working with the City, we’ve looked at current and anticipated densities as well as locations earmarked for commercial and industrial development and have integrated the findings into our plans. Knowing where power is going to be needed in advance allows everyone involved to plan for infrastructure needs, including energy, in a way that allows for public acceptance.” These are not issues that catch planners by surprise – very little happens that we in the utility business don’t know about for years in advance, but now what we’re getting better at is letting everyone else know.”
“The conversation [to date] is backwards,” says Brent Gilmour, Executive Director of QUEST (Quality Urban Energy Systems of Tomorrow). “Planning for energy is often one step removed from the people most dependent on it – local citizens and businesses. We need to have community leaders engaged about what might work best right from the outset of an energy project, and that includes local energy sources to meet local energy needs. But citizens and businesses also need to be champions and engaged in the conversation. “This is one way to help limit community divisiveness, and project reversals like Oakville and Mississauga. We need to encourage avoiding defensive and reactionary modes with an inclusive approach that builds to a solution – an integrated energy system response that supports local utility and community developers.”
QUEST wants to see every community in Canada by 2030 operating as an integrated energy system, and is committed to making integrated community energy systems and solutions (ICES) a standard for land-use and transportation planning and development. For more information, see “QUEST’s vision,” this issue.
A full-blown example of this kind of planning might include a community energy network tied together with an economic development zone:
• A district heating grid is becoming increasingly common device, intended to attract development. Once in place, the grid can evolve into a district energy system, with combined heat and power. “Once you have an energy grid as foundation, you create a market for thermal energy,” explains Rob Kerr, Corporate Manager of Guelph’s Community Energy Program. “That can inspire all kinds of innovation; for example,existing buildings with boilers can participate by being both a buyer and a seller of thermal energy.” But the grid comes first, and it’s designed, first, for heat. Electrical power is optional.
• The full flowering of that kind of system is the eco-business zone, where a complete suite of services is offered to businesses, existing and potential, as an attraction. Guelph is working on a greenfield site, Hanlon Creek Business Park. At another project in the Toronto area, the Pearson airport is the nucleus. But in all such cases, the core is the existence of a thermal grid.
See the companion article, “Getting supply close to load - How they’re doing it,” for more details.