Saskatchewan Crown Collaboration Report 2020-21

Saskatchewan Legislative Building Regina

DEMAND RESPONSE

or needs to purchase power off the open grid during high usage events. The agreement touches on two of SaskTel’s strategic goals: delivering an exceptional customer experience and maximizing long-term financial sustainability. Besides delivering a beneficial service to SaskPower, SaskTel will benefit by being financially compensated for this program by SaskPower. And since SaskTel is required to run their generators during regular monthly intervals to ensure their continued usability and maintenance, this program will allow these generator runs to be completed at times where it is mutually beneficial to both SaskPower and SaskTel. This project is a great example of how our Crowns can leverage existing solutions in place, and with minor adjustments, capitalize on them in a different way.

In May 2018, an innovation session was held with representatives from Saskatchewan’s Crown corporations. From that session, an interesting idea emerged that eventually resulted in Demand Response. Discussions began on the feasibility of SaskTel and SaskPower coordinating a way to leverage existing generator infrastructure to curtail commercial power consumption during peak power usage within the province. Thus, the creation of the Demand Response agreement between SaskTel and SaskPower was formed. In the spirit of Crown collaboration, SaskPower and SaskTel formed a small team to explore the feasibility of the idea. In 2020, a renewed focus presented itself with a group from SaskTel who took on sponsorship, a leadership role within operations, and technical support. The hard work and collaboration between the Crowns paid off with the signing of the Demand Response contract on December 1, 2020. Demand Response is a SaskPower program that lowers the demand on the power system by paying larger customers to reduce or shift power use. The program will have SaskTel utilize its generators on Lorne Street, effectively shifting power from grid to 100% generator created for the Lorne St. buildings. These requests will happen when SaskPower is at risk of overloading the grid

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