Problem

The town of Lac-Mégantic in Québec, Canada, suffered a catastrophic rail disaster in 2013 when a train full of crude oil derailed in the town’s downtown core.  In 2014 Lac-Mégantic turned its gaze forward and started its path towards redevelopment with a whole new vision of the district.  As it entered the planning stage, Lac‑Mégantic set an ambitious goal to become a hub of innovation.  Simultaneously, Hydro‑Québec was planning its own energy transition strategy.  The convergence of these two visions resulted in the Lac‑Mégantic microgrid, which was jointly developed over the months that followed.

Hydro-Québec, the power utility for the province of Québec, deployed advanced energy technologies across Lac-Mégantic’s entire downtown core to materialize the town’s vision and develop the expertise required for a larger province-wide energy transition.

This state-of-the-art microgrid incorporates a 600-kW grid-forming battery energy storage system, a 524-kW PV solar system and six commercial and institutional buildings with a mix of building management systems, behind-the-meter PV systems, and battery storage. In total, the Lac-Mégantic microgrid includes approximately 30 buildings, 2,200 solar panels, with a total installed capacity of about 800 kW, and batteries that can store approximately 700 kWh of energy.

Solution

Working in partnership with CIMA+, SGS is deploying Strata Resilience to enable Microgrid and DERMS functionality. This includes multi-purpose use of batteries and planned or unplanned islanding utilizing diverse load and generation assets.

Result

The Lac-Mégantic microgrid project has been in operation since December 2020. The islanding function was integrated in June 2021 and the completion of optimization and forecasting functionalities is expected by late 2021.