Jean Marie abuzz with energy awareness
Metering pilot project officially launches
April Hudson
Northern News Services
Thursday, March 24, 2016
TTHEK'EHDELI/JEAN MARIE RIVER
Lights may be going off in Jean Marie River but that doesn't mean nobody's home.
Students at Louie Norwegian School came over for a presentation on energy awareness. Twelve-year-old Esmeralda Antoine, left, holds up the shirt she got from the NWT Power Corporation, alongside classmates K'alemi Wetrade, 9, and Martin Antoine, 7. - April Hudson/NNSL photo
|
In fact, it could mean exactly the opposite now that the community has launched a pilot project to introduce energy awareness.
The pilot project, a collaboration between Jean Marie River First Nation, the Northwest Territories Power Corporation and the GNWT, involves intelligent metering hubs installed at homes in conjunction with monitors that can track every minute of energy usage.
Northwest Territories Power Corporation employees were on-hand at Jean Marie River's band office the afternoon of March 16 to deliver presentations on the monitors as well as hand them out to community members. Also present was Teresa Chilkowich of the Arctic Energy Alliance.
Power corp. spokesperson Pam Coulter said the project aims to test the effect of energy awareness on conservation.
"We looked at a bunch of different (monitors) and this one met our needs," she said.
Residents who use the monitors can see how much their usage rises when they plug in an appliance or turn off all their lights. All they have to do is wait approximately eight seconds for the monitor to adjust.
The monitor also comes equipped with yellow, green and red lights to indicate what energy level a household is consuming. If the light is green, that means it is using less than 500 watts. A yellow light means energy consumption is between 500 and 2,500 watts, and red means more than 2,500 watts is being used.
Currently, the power corp. has intelligent metering hubs on 28 households in Jean Marie River as well as 15 commercial buildings.
Teresa Chilkowich, the Arctic Energy Alliance's regional energy co-ordinator, said the pilot is a "natural fit" with Arctic Energy Alliance's aims to reduce energy consumption.
"The Arctic Energy Alliance wants to help communities reduce their power usage on diesel generators," she said. "The more they can learn about their pattern of usage and peak usage, they will learn in this one-year project of gathering data."
Currently, Jean Marie River has three generators running.
"The idea of this pilot project is to help community members understand their usage and needs, and where there can be flexibility," Chilkowich said.
Some of that data can be tracked through monthly submissions to Arctic Energy Alliance from households with intelligent metering hubs.
Chilkowich said data gathered before the monitors were given out will be compared with data gathered after the fact to determine whether residents decreased their energy usage as they became more aware of it.
Paul Grant, the power corp.'s senior manager of customer service, said the company will be looking to expand the project down the road and launch a customer web portal that will provide users with more information on their usage.
"We want to expand community-wide to more households and businesses," he said.
The pilot project's launch comes virtually on the eve of the Northwest Territories transitioning to its summer support rate threshold for power for communities in the thermal zone.
From April 1 to Aug. 31, the threshold drops to 600 kWh from 1,000 kWh meaning power users will have to pay 60.83 cents per kWh for additional usage. Within the allotted threshold, users will be billed 28.31 cents per kWh.
