Federal government giving $6M to Hydro Ottawa for AI software to monitor grid

A Hydro Ottawa vehicle is seen in this undated photo. (CTV Ottawa)

The federal government is giving Hydro Ottawa $6 million toward a pilot project implementing artificial intelligence (AI) to predict when the electricity grid might face peaks in demand.

The government says the Ottawa Distributed Energy Resource Accelerator (ODERA) program will allow Hydro Ottawa to use “AI-enhanced predictive analytics to accurately forecast peak demand, which will then inform the real-time balancing of supply and demand.”

Energy Minister Tim Hodgson and AI Minister Evan Solomon made the announcement Thursday.

“If we want an energy system that is smarter, cleaner, and more resilient, we must be prepared to innovate,” Hodgson said at an event Thursday morning.

“AI is the next chapter of our history, and if we use it wisely, it will create opportunities for Canadians, strengthen our economy, and accelerate the transition to net-zero.”

Solomon says artificial intelligence technology should serve Canadians, not the other way around.

“Whether predicting outages before they happen, balancing demand on the grid, or helping protect critical systems from cyberthreats, AI is used where it counts,” he said. “The announcement marks a shift from managing today’s grid to building tomorrow’s.”

The government says the technology will make use of smart thermostats, electric vehicle chargers and home batteries to allow Hydro Ottawa to proactively identify and mitigate grid constraints.

“Think of it as a local smart traffic cop for electricity. It predicts where and when the grid might get overloaded and then adjusts those customer devices to smoothly lower demand,” said Hydro Ottawa CEO Bryce Conrad. “This smart, real-time teamwork makes the power supply much more dependable for everyone in the neighbourhood.”

Pilot project in Kanata North

Conrad said rising demand in Ottawa, particularly in Kanata North, with its major technology park, is putting pressure on the grid.

“We simply can’t install new poles and wires. It’s not enough. Our entire grid needs to adapt, and we need a smarter way to manage the load.”

Speaking on Newstalk 580 CFRA’s Ottawa Now with Kristy Cameron, Conrad said the project would be for customers in the Kanata North area and they would need to opt in.

“What we’re going to do is we’re going to allow customers to sign up for this program. The program will use their existing infrastructure, whether they be smart thermostats, or heat pumps, or electric vehicle charging assets… we will use those assets, relying upon AI and algorithms to predict when we’re peaking, when we need to offset or reduce power,“ he said. ”So, the algorithms will be running and making these determinations for us."

Conrad stressed decisions will still ultimately be made by human operators and customers still have the final say.

“The customer is in complete control. If the customer doesn’t want us to be doing this, they have the ability to take that power away from the system,” he explained.

“Under no circumstances are we turning this over to a ChatGPT model that’s going to be doing this. This is always going to be managed. We’ll always have line-of-sight to the decision to curtail when that comes.”

Conrad said the project could involve up to 39,000 customers.

“We just want to learn. AI is the future in any number of industries, not the least of which is the energy sector,” he said. “We want to be able to learn from this, build out our own skillset, learn to rely upon it, figure out what’s working and what isn’t working and go from there.”

Conrad said the program is still being designed and the software has yet to be sourced, but he expects it will be made in Canada.

• Sign up now for daily CTV News Ottawa newsletters
• The information you need to know, sent directly to you: Download the CTV News App