The solar photovoltaic energy industry has burgeoned in Ontario ever since the provincial government introduced a feed-in-tariff Program two years ago. Under this program, the Ontario Power Authority currently guarantees a fixed price for a 20-year contract. The rates for every kWh generated are from $0.44 for ground utility-scale PV farms all the way up to $.80 for residential rooftop installations.
In 2009, Ontario had 46 MW installed, whereas in 2010 it had 169 MW installed. This year, the projected approved capacity is 455 MW. Most of the Ontario solar industry PV projects are still in the planning stages. But, according to a report by the U.S. Interstate Renewable Energy Council, by 2009 Ontario was already the third-largest market for solar PV installations in North America. It ranked only behind New Jersey and California.
The province’s FIT and MicroFIT programs have drawn scores of manufacturers, installers, developers, and other entrepreneurs anxious to capitalize on the perceived revenues into the solar business. Developments underway range from rooftop units on single-family homes (and aggregations thereof), to commercial-scale solar farms.
Surprisingly, the list of members in CANSia, the Canadian Solar Industries Association based in Ottawa, includes only a handful of the larger consulting engineering companies. There are small specialists and large contractor companies such as Bechtel and Black & McDonald. However, there is only a handful of the larger Canadian consulting engineering companies. We found only Genivar, Hatch, Morrison Hershfield, and Stantec.
Hatch has been an active participant in the solar industry for about 10 years. Moreover, it has a relatively large dedicated team within its renewable energy division. Rob Lydan is former Director of Solar worldwide with Hatch, based in the Mississauga office.
The design of the systems themselves is not complicated, says Lydan. “Building a solar farm is like assembling an automobile. It’s a matter of logistics, geotechnical, electrical, and civil engineering details. It’s not rocket science.” For that reason, many of the companies doing the design offer turnkey projects and use their in-house designers.
“The problem is that if you make an error, then the error is repeated 40,000 times.”
He suggests that this is where the leverage for consulting engineers lies.
Where Hatch comes into the picture is in providing reassurance to the site developers and financiers. “For us in the consulting engineering field, it’s not so much about detailed design. That is because they can go to a Tier 2 shop to get that done. But, from an uncertainty standpoint, when it comes to dealing between the developers, the lenders, the stakeholder, this is primarily the business that we are occupied in.”
Lydan describes their four main fields of solar activity: First is in guiding a proposal through the environmental approval process, which can take up to two years. Hatch has around 70% of the solar REA approvals work in Ontario. And, it is also currently involved in similar work for several 50+ MW solar farms in South Africa.
Second is doing due diligence for the developers and financers: “That’s a big body of work,” Lydan explains. These clients are typically large international banks and insurance companies.
Third, says Lydan, they do base engineering from a pre-feasibility and feasibility standpoint for the project developers and proponents. This stage of work might involve energy production modeling.
Lastly, the consultants might be involved in connecting the solar farm to the main electricity grid. That’s work that involves “interconnections and negotiations with utilities, system design for substations, and interconnections and tap lines,” says Lydan.
Ontario’s goal is to see 2,700 MW installed by 2014 according to its draft Long Term Energy Plan released late last year. And if you think that is ambitious – consider that cloudy Germany already installed 6000 MW of solar PV power in 2010.
A typical 10-MW solar farm will have between 40,000-45,000 panels. One of Canada’s first operating utility-scale solar farms developed under the predecessor of the FIT program the RESOP program was First Light Solar Park in Nepanee, Ontario, a 10.5-MW development by Skypower and Sun Edison.
According to the Canadian solar research company ClearSky, $7.9 billion will be ready for solar PV in Ontario between 2010-2015. They also estimate that solar PV provides 12 times more jobs than nuclear energy per unit of energy produced and 15 times more jobs than coal and gas.
Here is everything you need to know about Implementing Operational Savings for Remote Mines. Take a look.
Rob Lydan’s speech, Canadian Power Engineers’ and Phoventus’ CEO.
Canadian Power Engineers is an Ontario-based, fully licensed, and accredited Engineering firm with a global reputation for excellence in power systems engineering. Above all, we are professional, independent, and focused on delivering value-added results to your renewable power or transportation project.
In fact, we provide engineering and procurement services to cover all aspects of your renewable energy, EV, or Remote Power project. Of course, our services are comprehensive, consisting of system engineering, design studies, and project management.
However, our firm is not a construction company and we don’t do installations ourselves. Instead, we do coordinate and provide engineering design and construction management for your chosen contractor. Unfortunately, we do not provide service to the single residence market at this time.
Our Mission is to provide an unparalleled technical focus on the core issues affecting the ownership, reliability, and profitability of power and energy projects.
We are a driven, passionate team. Our value is our insight into the latest technology and approaches needed to deliver our client’s projects on time and within budget. Renewable Power Specialist.
This is the third year that Phoventus has been part of the Bloomberg NEF Tier 1 survey. Read more about Solar Module & Inverter Bankability 2019.
Our firm was founded as Lydan Partners Inc. in 2009 and merged with Phoventus in 2016 to become Phoventus Inc. Therefore, Canadian Power Engineers is the newest member of the family and a wholly-owned division of Phovetus Inc.
Canadian Power Engineers is an Ontario-based, fully licensed, and accredited Engineering firm with a global reputation for excellence in power systems engineering. Above all, we are professional, independent, and focused on delivering value-added results to your renewable power or transportation project.
We provide engineering and procurement services to cover all aspects of your renewable energy, EV, or Remote Power project. Of course, our services are comprehensive, consisting of system engineering, design studies, and project management.
However, our firm is not a construction company and we don’t do installations ourselves. We do coordinate and provide engineering design and construction management for your chosen contractor. Unfortunately, we do not provide service to the single residence market at this time.
Our Mission is to provide an unparalleled technical focus on the core issues affecting the ownership, reliability, and profitability of power and energy projects.
Above all, we are a driven, passionate team. Our value is our insight into the latest technology and approaches needed to deliver our client’s projects on time and within budget. Renewable Power Specialist.
Get to know more about Solar Module & Inverter Bankability 2019.
Non-Pilot Protection of the Inverter-Dominated Microgrid.
Without utilizing costly communication systems, the existing protection strategies fail to reliably detect the occurrence and direction of faults in the inverter-dominated microgrid.
In order to address this issue, this paper introduces a selective and reliable non-pilot protection strategy. It addresses the inverter-dominated microgrid. In fact, the proposed protection strategy does not require communication signals. It incorporates phase- and sequence-domain protective elements for reliable detection of symmetrical and asymmetrical faults. Furthermore, it improves the existing sequence-domain directional elements. In particular, it effectively utilizes them for accurate determination of the fault direction.
Of course, this happens in the presence of inverter-interfaced distributed energy resources. In addition, it selectively protects the inverter-dominated microgrid against internal and external faults. Finally, it is robust against the grid-connection mode of the microgrid and enables fuse protection of laterals and non-critical circuits.
The acceptable performance of the proposed protection strategy is verified through comprehensive fault studies. They were conducted on a realistic study system simulated in the PSCAD/EMTDC software environment. This paper also demonstrates that the proposed protection strategy can serve by using an off-the-shelf digital relay.
The proliferation of the alternating current (AC) microgrid holds down because of the lack of a cost-effective, selective, and reliable strategy for its protection against faults. The protection strategies used in traditional distribution networks are not generally applicable to microgrids. The protection challenges are further complicated in the inverter-dominated microgrid to which the majority, if not all, of the distributed energy resources (DERs), are interfaced through inverters. The issue is threefold.
First, the conventional over-current (OC) relays may fail to detect the limited fault currents contributed by the inverter-interfaced DERs (IIDERs). Second, coordinating the OC relays in the inverter-dominated microgrid is challenging, due to the significantly different fault current levels under the grid-connected and islanded operation modes. Third, the conventional phase- and sequence-domain directional elements fail to accurately determine the fault direction in the inverter-dominated microgrid. This happens under specific operating conditions, as demonstrated in this paper.
Different microgrid protection strategies are in place in order to address these issues.
To view the PDF, please click here.
Phoventus was contracted to provide engineering support of Solar project ARC Flash Assessments for 3 Ontario Utility-Scale Solar Projects.
Between December 3ʳᵈ, 2018, and February 28ᵗʰ, 2019, Phoventus provided a full-wrap arc flash study, including prerequisite studies and data collection. A site inspection took place between January 3ʳᵈ, and January 6ᵗʰ, 2019. The study was completed using ETAP 18.1.1 and included both DC and AC studies.
This work conformed to the following standards: ANSI (1/2 Cycle), IEEE
946, IEEE 1584-2002, DC Arc Flash (Stokes & Oppenlander).
Several regulations, codes, and standards define requirements for Arc Flash safety, including OSHA, NFPA 70E, CSA Z462, IEEE 1584-2018, and NESC. Article 130.5 of NFPA 70E requires employers to perform an Arc Flash risk assessment for electrical equipment and to update the study every five years.
Alberta Loadflow – Interconnection Engineering
Performed due diligence, review and capacity assessment for interconnection of a 150MW solar facility to the transmission system in Southern Alberta Region. Recommended the most viable and cost-effective connection point to the transmission system following detailed calculation of stability limits, thermal ratings and load-generation capacities in the designated planning area. Alberta Loadflow and Capacity analysis was a success.
Phoventus is a fully licensed, and accredited Engineering firm with a global reputation for excellence in power systems engineering. In fact, Canadian Power Engineers is the newest member of the family and a wholly-owned division of Phovetus Inc.
Phoventus was contracted by Recurrent Energy in order to provide engineering support in assessing the Energy Storage System (ESS) Integrators’ bids for the 45MW/180MWh Slate Project in Kings County, California. The quality and quantity of documents submitted by the bidders differed significantly. In addition, the level of conformance to the RFP was varied, and the underlying assumptions in each bid diverged from each other.
• Vendor as well as technology evaluation
• Integrator bid review and scorecard
• Lithium-Ion, battery performance specifications
• Controller selection
• Warranty as well as remedy review
• System safety and ARC flash conformance
• System Design and modeling
• Grid interconnection specifications as well as engineering
• Electrical, instrumentation & controls
• Ramp Rate and C rate calculation
• Permit and ITC compliance
• Protections and control
• Modeling and System Design
• Engineering as well as Grid interconnection specifications
• Instrumentation, electrical & controls
• C rate calculation and Ramp Rate
• ITC compliance as well as Permit
• Control and protections
Phoventus is a fully licensed, and accredited Engineering firm with a global reputation for excellence in power systems engineering. Also, Canadian Power Engineers is the newest member of the family and a wholly-owned division of Phovetus Inc.
The Climate-Smart Mining Facility will help resource-rich developing countries benefit from the increasing demand for minerals and metals. That is while ensuring the mining sector is managed in a way that minimizes the environmental and climate footprint.
The Facility supports the sustainable extraction and processing of minerals and metals to secure supply for clean energy technologies. It is by minimizing the social, environmental, and climate footprint throughout the value chain of those materials. Scaling up technical assistance and investments in resource-rich developing countries will enable that.
While the growing demand for minerals and metals provides economic opportunities for resource-rich developing countries and private sector entities alike, significant challenges will likely emerge if the climate-driven clean energy transition is not responsible and sustainable.
The Climate-Smart Mining approach has been developed in concert with the broader UN Sustainable Development Goals. The goal was to ensure that the decarbonization of the mining and energy sectors also benefits resource-rich countries. These countries host these strategic minerals and their extraction directly impacts communities.
Climate-Smart Mining builds on the work the World Bank is doing to help ensure resource-rich developing countries benefit from their mineral resources and manage them in a sustainable manner while fostering economic growth and development. Our technical support also helps governments improve the investment climate by strengthening governance and building the capacities of key institutions, policy frameworks, and legislation.
Canadian Power Engineers is the newest member of the family and a wholly-owned division of Phovetus Inc. We are an Engineering firm with a global reputation for excellence in power systems engineering. Above all, we are professional, independent, and focused on delivering value-added results to your renewable power or transportation project. Our mission is to provide technical focus on the core issues. Our value is our insight into the latest technology and approaches needed to deliver our client’s projects on time and within budget. Renewable Power Specialist.
Ontario Portfolio – Owners engineering services in including remediation of EPC Electrical Design Engineering. C&I Li-Ion Portfolio Confidential Battery Energy Storage, Canada. Electrical Engineering including technical oversight and input to the EPC contract development. Ontario Behind the Meter Battery.
Ontario Behind the Meter Battery
Canadian Power Engineers is the newest member of the family and a wholly-owned division of Phovetus Inc. We are a driven, passionate team. Our value is our insight into the latest technology and approaches needed to deliver our client’s projects on time and within budget. Renewable Power Specialist.