Natural Resources committee  On smart grid?

Natural Resources committee  I would say that in some areas we're at the forefront. For example, the smart meter project in Ontario is the largest implementation of time-of-use rates in the world. California and Ontario took on their projects at about the same time, starting in 2007. Both projects are fini

Natural Resources committee  The smart grid is really being laid on top of its existing technology. At the end of the day, the distribution system is transmitting electricity—electrons over copper wire—into your home, and they are going to be the same systems transmitting that electricity. The physics of tra

Natural Resources committee  In the province of Quebec, Hydro-Québec undertook a project over the last five years to add something we call “distribution automation”. There are many switches on the distribution system, and before you would always have to wait for a customer to call to say his power was out, a

Natural Resources committee  Smart meters are very useful when you're trying to change customers' behaviour as to when they use electricity. For example, in Ontario they had quite a large peak demand, meaning that the majority of energy was used in the middle of the day. Just to meet that peak, they were hav

Natural Resources committee  Especially in Ontario.... Ontario has some of the most generous feed-in tariffs in the world. Right now they're paying 13¢ a kilowatt hour for wind, 40¢ for solar, 60¢ for small-based rooftop. That's been creating quite a lot of new renewable energy projects in Ontario. Ontario's

Natural Resources committee  That is correct. It started primarily with their Green Energy and Green Economy Act. Largely, they were trying to encourage renewable energy manufacturers to locate in the province, and to do that they encouraged developers to build renewable energy in Ontario. However, to get

Natural Resources committee  Is this a question for me?

Natural Resources committee  One of our members, Hydro One, finished up the first release of their smart grid project. They did apply for the SR and ED tax credit, and they received funding from the SR and ED tax credit—which we didn't expect, so thank you to the federal government for providing that funding

Natural Resources committee  What I've seen work, especially for the new technologies, is that—and it's largely been provincial governments that I've seen do the work, one good example of which is the MaRS facility in Toronto. MaRS is an institute funded by the Ontario government that takes new medical techn

Natural Resources committee  Sure. The point we were trying to make was with regard to a lot of the things our utilities are being asked for in Canada, and it's true around the world: we're trying to accomplish environmental goals—not so much in Canada—but national security goals, economic goals, job growth

Natural Resources committee  Sure. The same renewal of our infrastructure that we're facing in Canada is also being faced in the United States and in Europe. They estimate that we'll spend tens of billions of dollars renewing our electricity infrastructure in Canada, hundreds of billions of dollars in the

Natural Resources committee  Yes.

Natural Resources committee  We have not done a study on the economic benefits for Canada. That's one of the things we want to ask for, and it's something we've already started to talk with NRCan about, doing an economic benefits analysis for Canada. Other studies we have done for the U.K., the U.S., but it'

Natural Resources committee  I appreciate the opportunity. I'm expecting a baby any moment now. There was a false alarm yesterday. I have an eye on the phone just in case.