Smart Wires today announced the successful delivery of a first project in Canada, a significant step towards the adoption of digital power flow control technology in the country.
The project involves evaluating Smart Wires' core technology - SmartValve™ - in a mobile deployment to increase system capacity and improve reliability. The SmartValves were deployed at a substation in southern Alberta to reduce network congestion by actively balancing power flows across the surrounding circuits. This unlocked increased capacity on the existing network for generation, resolving a short-term network need in the area.
Smart Wires partners with customers across the world to transform the grid and sees huge potential for digital power flow control to support the huge growth in new generation connecting to the grid and increasing electrification of society across Canada.
"This is the first of what we expect to be many projects for Smart Wires in Canada, where electric transmission system owners are working hard to connect consumers with affordable, renewable energy," said Jessica Joyce, Smart Wires Chief Sales Officer. "We are proud to collaborate with companies who are embracing the potential of technologies like ours to create a digital, secure and accessible grid."
SmartValve is a modular Static Synchronous Series Compensator (SSSC) that quickly unlocks network capacity by pushing power off overloaded lines or pulling power onto underutilized lines. Its modular design enables flexible and scalable deployments that provide long-term network planning solutions to integrate renewables and demand, increase interregional power transfer, lower costs, improve grid resiliency and multiple other applications. It can also be used to address urgent or short-term needs and support outage management due to its easily movable design. SmartValve also provides dynamic services such as improving transient stability and voltage stability.
The mobile deployment option enables companies to install and commission SmartValves within days, and without the need for costly substation site modifications. This project was commissioned in September 2022.