Calgary Startup Offers Wholesale Renewable Power to Homeowners

A startup in the heart of Canada’s oil and gas production region is incentivizing residential conversion to solar power with a cloud-based “virtual power plant” that allows customers to use their own stored power, as well as power from the grid, at “wholesale” rates during periods of peak energy usage.

Calgary-based Solartility also is offering residential customers a zero-down leasing option for a rooftop photovoltaic solar panel installation complete with battery storage and an EV charger, according to a report in the Toronto Star.

The key to the system—a feature that makes it unique, the company says—is a bi-directional interval meter, which records power flow in two directions on an hourly basis.

The two-way meters, hooked up to the cloud-based platform, allows customers to use their own stored power during peak-usage times. Solartility says its software can determine the optimal time to export solar electricity directly from the panels or from the homeowner’s battery, as well as the optimal time to import power from the electrical grid.

Solartility is branding the platform Canada’s first “retail, 100% renewable energy-based virtual power plant” that gives homeowners access to wholesale electricity prices.

“In a nutshell, we’re maximizing export pricing and minimizing import consumption prices, in aggregate as a pool. It means that, for the first time, residential solar customers in Alberta will have access to the wholesale electricity market,” Solartility co-founder Shayne Butcher told the Star.

Butcher has coined a new term for residential solar arrays hooked up to battery storage systems—he calls them “micro-generators.”

Most of Canada’s oil reserves are located in the Western province of Alberta—it’s why the Edmonton and Calgary NHL franchises are named the Oilers and the Flames—but the region is actually on its way to running out of oil.

That’s if you consider 1.8 billion barrels “running out.”

The province originally had deposits estimated at more than 18B barrels, but much of the oil close to the surface has been depleted by drilling in recent decades.

What remains can be accessed by fracking—a.k.a. horizontal fracturing, which involves drilling a horizontal shaft a mile below the surface and pumping water in to create fractures in layers of shale that then release oil and gas deposits.

Edmonton has taken the lead in establishing itself as the leading hub in Canada for the development of hydrogen power.

With plans underway for more than 25 projects, the Edmonton Region Hydrogen HUB—launched by an alliance of government, academic and economic development resources—aims to make Canada a global leader in the production, transportation and end use of hydrogen power as well as carbon capture and storage.