Summerland is one of five municipalities in B.C. to own and operate its own electrical utility.
We purchase power wholesale from FortisBC and distribute it to local homes and businesses through two substations.
Fortis rates are based on peak use.
We as a community reach our maximum electricity consumption only a couple times a year – on the coldest winter night and on the hottest summer day when the air con is blasting.
At other times, we’re paying for the capacity to reach our peak even though we don’t need it.
We could, therefore, realize savings on our electrical bills year round just by reducing the amount of electricity we buy from Fortis at peak times.
One way to do this would be to generate and store a bit of our own electricity for use during peak hours — a process known as peak shaving.
Ownership and control of the local utility makes this a feasible proposition.
Our most recent purchase agreement with Fortis allows us to generate a quantity of our own power that we can feed back into the grid.
Peak shaving will require coordination and planning.
We will need to track supply and demand trends, analyze records, and forecast the peaks. But it’s worth the effort to be able to remove excess loads from Fortis and draw from our own alternative energy source as demand warrants.
While there are different alternative energy sources out there, solar appears to be a good fit for Summerland. It would allow us to increase efficiency and add capacity while at the same time help meet our climate action commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 33 per cent from 2007 levels to 2020.
Solar energy technologies have advanced dramatically in recent years while also becoming more affordable. Summerland’s geographic location and hours of sunlight (305 days per year compared to 289 in Vancouver) makes us one of the best places in the province to take advantage of solar energy.
We also have the opportunity to learn from solar projects already deployed in Nelson, Kimberly, and Merritt.
To this end, Council has initiated the Summerland Integrated Solar Project.
We have applied for a provincial Rural Dividend grant to augment research on different solar technologies and business models, return-on-investment calculations, reliability of emerging storage solutions, and costs for interconnection to the grid.
We will also gauge local interest in investing in a community-owned project. The objective is to come up with a detailed plan for municipal solar energy generation.
The project will also create a roadmap for residents and businesses wanting to install solar technologies on their own properties. This work will include a full review of municipal processes for solar installation permitting, which are currently too expensive, lengthy, and confusing.
Summerland residents and businesses have expressed a strong interest in solar power because it’s a clean, cheap, and virtually endless source of energy.
With local participation, the future is bright for sunny Summerland to increase its energy security, support community resiliency, and go green.
Doug Holmes is a Summerland councillor.
