At the end of 2022, there were 145 electricity distribution companies in Canada. Some of them — like Hydro Ottawa and Toronto Hydro — have roots dating back more than 100 years. Others are newer to the scene, either as brand new companies or as subsidiaries or mergers of previous entities. Elexicon — a regulated electricity distribution company that delivers electricity to approximately 176,000 customers in ten communities in eastern Ontario — falls into the latter camp. The relative newcomer is the product of a merger of Veridian Connections Inc. and Whitby Hydro Electric Corporation, which was approved by the Ontario Energy Board in late 2018. Elexicon officially commenced operations in April 2019.
Elexicon already has an impressive track record of innovation. The company — the fourth largest municipally owned electricity distributor in Ontario — isn’t just supplying dependable, safe and efficient energy (though they do that, too, of course!), it is also consistently coming up with fresh ways to better their offerings and the industry as a whole. They are striving to better serve their communities, to be environmental stewards that value their unique position to make a difference, and to create
a warm, welcoming and inclusive
workplace for the more than 280 people they employ.
Owned by five municipal shareholders — the Town of Ajax, the City of Belleville, the Municipality of Clarington, the City of Pickering and the Town of Whitby — Elexicon is working toward finding sustainable alternatives that will put their service areas on the path to being net zero in the years to come. This is a big ask for a utility company, but they have proven they are more than up for the challenge. Read on for four projects spearheaded by Elexicon that are
changing the face of the energy sector as we know it.
Seaton Transformer Station
Just a couple of months ago, Elexicon reached a major milestone: the completion of their first wholly owned and operated municipal transformer station. This project was a long time in the making, dating back to 2010 when stakeholders were planning the new Seaton community near Brock and Taunton Roads in Pickering. It was clear that additional resources would be required to power the 20,000 new homes and commercial and industrial spaces that would be built in Seaton. Elexicon knew there was a lack of electrical infrastructure in the area, so the forward-thinking company opted to solve the issue in a cost-efficient way by building a new transformer station to support the development. Ensuring the facility also had connection capacity for renewable energy resources was also important, as it aligned to the company’s mission of providing sustainable growth. The transformer station was energized in December 2022.
Altona TOWNS Microgrid
While we’re not exactly the Jetsons when it comes to where and how we live (you can’t move houses with the flip of a switch like they do in the retro cartoon), Elexicon is getting there: With funding from the Independent Electricity System Operator and Ontario Government, and in partnership with tech company Opus One and developer Marshall Homes, Elexicon created Altona Towns in west Pickering. Comprised of 27 homes on a fully integrated microgrid and outfitted with solar panels, electric vehicle chargers and energy storage, Altona Towns allows homeowners to save money and reduce emissions. The neighbourhood also proves that this smart, sustainable housing format will lessen the burden on the traditional power grid.
Elexicon will gather insights around the energy consumption of the community and how willing residents will be when it comes to tweaking their habits, with the hope that this development
will become a model for others like it in the future.
Elexicon already has an impressive track record of innovation. The company is consistently coming up with innovative ways of bettering their offerings.
Finding Value in Local Energy Markets
This pilot project with Powerconsumers, Newmarket-Tay Power Distribution (NT Power) and Norway-based NODES — an independent sustainable energy marketplace — is studying how customers would participate in transitioning to smarter, cleaner and more affordable energy systems. This includes more power generated locally. Today’s energy technology is getting closer and closer to where it needs to be used, rather than being situated near other resources like water or hydroelectricity as had been the requirement in the past. Plus, the declining costs of tech like solar power, electric vehicles and electric batteries mean that people could potentially use and share energy they create themselves.
The pilot will leverage the Powerconsumers model to simulate the operation of a future local energy market within the NT Power and Elexicon service territories, and estimate the energy, cost and reliability benefits of using local resources to meet local need. If exchanges of energy could be integrated with NODES’s proprietary energy services exchange platform, it would connect customers with distributors, allowing them to maximize available resources. (Think of it like Uber for electricity!) Project results for this pilot will be available this year.
Project VERITAS
In alignment with Elexicon’s mission to contribute to a more sustainable future, Project VERITAS is meant to enable a holistic, end-to-end approach to demand management. It will also help to accelerate decarbonization across Elexicon’s service areas. The main objective is to integrate more sustainable technologies — solar, wind, energy storage, etc. — into the existing distribution network. Also important to Project VERITAS is system reliability and grid resiliency, improved system planning and increased customer engagement.
The project includes four major components:
- An Advanced Distribution Management System
- A Distributed Energy Resource Management System
- Backbone communication infrastructure
- Design of an active Demand Management Program
The completion of this multipronged project should help in myriad ways, including helping to meet and exceed Canada’s 2030 greenhouse gas reduction targets, providing superior product visibility and management for Elexicon, expanding the available resources in the existing distribution system and improving system reliability.
