PowerStream begins building unique backup power supply system

PENETANGUISHENE, ON – PowerStream broke ground recently on the construction of a unique system that, when completed in 2016, will provide up to 11 hours of backup power supply for approximately 400 of the utility’s customers residing or owning a business in Penetanguishene.

The high-tech equipment for what is being referred to as the Penetanguishene Micro Grid, will be installed adjacent to PowerStreamÂ’s Robert Street Municipal Substation located east of the townÂ’s Main Street. It will be comprised of two 500 kilowatt-hours kWh batteries as well as a 750 kilowatt power control system and connected to a distribution powerline that provides service to customers in an area of the town bounded approximately by Robert Street East in the south, Hill Top Avenue in the north, Lecarron Avenue in the west and east of Centennial Drive.

The Penentanguishene Micro Grid will be able to operate either connected to the grid grid mode or disconnected from the grid island mode. It will enable PowerStream to provide power to customers even when there is a loss of supply from the provincial grid.

Micro Grids work in the same way as large-scale electricity delivery systems or a provincial grid, but instead of delivering electricity to hundreds of thousands or millions of customers at a time, they can be scaled down and customized to meet the needs of communities or even just one customer. Micro Grids rely on a mix of clean and renewable sources of generation and can operate independently or feed electricity back to the provincial grid.

The Penetanguishene Micro Grid will be operated from PowerStreamÂ’s System Control Centre at the companyÂ’s head office in Vaughan with remote accessibility for performance monitoring via the internet by the companyÂ’s project partner, the Korea Electric Power Corporation KEPCO.