London Hydro-led Team Named Finalist for Canada-U.K PowerForward Challenge

London, ON – July 8, 2019  Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources, the Honourable Amarjeet Sohi, and the U.K.’s Minister of Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, the Honourable Chris Skidmore, have announced the seven finalist teams of the Canada-U.K. Power Forward Challenge.

The Power Forward Challenge is a joint Canada-U.K. initiative that invites Canadian and U.K. organizations to collaborate to envision and demonstrate breakthrough smart grid solutions that will modernize the way we access clean, flexible and reliable energy.

The London-to-London (L2L) consortium of London Hydro, Electron UK, ENMAX, the University of Western Ontario, Navigant and Gowling WLG was selected as one of 3 Canadian finalists along with 4 UK finalists from a group of 44 project proposal teams competing in the Power Forward Challenge.

Modernizing the Grid Today for a Sustainable Future

“Enabling a digital grid that can flexibly incorporate and utilize all customer-sited resources requires forward-thinking, leading-edge technology and easy market access and participation,” said Vinay Sharma, CEO, London Hydro. 

"London Hydro and our team partners are proud to have been selected as a finalist in the Canada-U.K.Power Forward Challenge to demonstrate this solution. Our open, end-to-end DER (Distributed Energy Resources) platform will be developed in Ontario and will be extensible to support the increasing DERs across Canada and trans-continentally in the U.K.”

The London Hydro-led team will deliver a single open, scalable Open Data DER platform to benefit utilities, their customers, the grid, and the environment to address the market need for an effective way for utilities to integrate the rapidly growing number of customer-sited DERs into the grid and to easily identify and leverage those resources for grid balancing.

The L2L pilot project will leverage London Hydro’s scalable Green Button energy data access and secure data sharing platform and Electron’s proven blockchain-based flexibility market platform to create and demonstrate a standards-based, end-to-end DER engagement system; directory service and asset registry; and trading marketplace. The powerful new open DER platform will enable utilities to easily integrate, view and engage customer-sited DERs for grid balancing services; identify and register DERs; provide actionable customer energy data; and incentivize customers with DERs to participate in grid management.

The use of open, standards-based technology will remove barriers for data collection (meter & transactions) and will facilitate interoperability across platforms and applications to ensure a seamless experience for customers. Customers with DERs will have the ability to easily leverage accurate, real-time energy data for better management and be able to monetize these resources in a marketplace.

The L2L pilot will present a market-based approach for DER grid integration using open, innovative technologies. Lessons learned will inform policy, including design of future retail and wholesale markets to enable higher operational efficiencies, increased customer participation, lower carbon, and a more resilient grid for the future.

A $3 million dollar grant will be awarded to develop the pilot.

“The L2L project team is looking forward to collaborating on a revolutionary, secure customer DER engagement platform that can scale to support the new energy economy as it grows in Canada and the U.K.,” said Syed Mir, VP Corporate Services & CIO, London Hydro.

“The London-to-London pilot will show how utilities can efficiently incorporate DERs and view their status, and will provide customers that have DERs with a seamless way to monetize their resources in a marketplace, while incentivizing their continued participation in grid management.”

For more information contact:

Nancy Hutton (519) 661-5800 ext. 5797
Cell (519) 639-7774