Smart cities will require a significant build-out of electrical infrastructure to support the demand for low-carbon and reliable electricity. In doing so, electric utilities will need to balance requirements of reliability and affordability with ensuring that the grid infrastructure of the future mitigates the GHG emissions associated with the full lifecycle of grid assets as well as being more resilient to more frequent extreme weather events. This increasingly intricate balancing act utilities must walk through makes designing grid infrastructure more complex and is the focus of the presentation.

How do utilities, including Hydro Ottowa, consider comprehensive and holistic analysis of lifecycle carbon emissions in the design of substations? How do utilities plan for traditional reliability concerns and new load growth challenges such as electrification of space heating, hot water heating, and transportation loads during their designs? How do utilities evaluate and source low-carbon material alternatives that still meet design requirements and build resiliency into the grid? How is grid infrastructure designed to be able to accommodate other future strategies for energy conservation, demand response, thermal storage, and vehicle-to-grid (V2G)? How will the system be designed to optimize the location and capacity of equipment to maximize benefits to the ratepayers, considering affordability?

These questions will be addressed as part of our presentation, showcasing pragmatic solutions to how these challenges were considered in designing a critical utility low-carbon substation that is being constructed to serve a future smart city community. The presentation will offer an outline for factoring these solutions into your design process to support the utility’s efforts in achieving net zero emissions by 2030 and support overall smart city master plans.