Thank you, Chair.
My first questions go to CanmetENERGY.
People buy additional electricity for their grid from independent power producers. Quite often, those kinds of so-called independent power producers are small in size, and quite often they use renewable energy.
I have a report that was published by NRCan called “Connecting MicroPower to the Grid”. In section 2.4, “Interconnection”, the report says:
Perhaps the number one interconnection barrier for small renewable systems has been the lack of uniformity in interconnection standards from utility to utility. This is a result of the traditional discretion given to utilities to deal with their own generation, transmission, and distribution systems.
To be more accurate, it is a problem of many utilities not having any standards at all for small grid-tied generators.
As a result:
...interconnection is addressed on either a case-by-case basis or through existing standards usually used for larger industrial systems.
Can you comment on that?
Also, in your opinion, how urgent is the need to have this kind of standard, and how difficult is it to create this standard?