Case Studies
As part of the Smart Energy Halifax agenda, dive deep into case studies on various topics and get a greater understanding of challenges and solutions in the clean energy space.
April 14, 2026
DERs, Demand Flexibility & Grid Moderation: The New Backbone of Reliability
10:30 am - 11:30 am Ballroom B
Closing the Flexibility Gap: How Atlantic Grids and Enterprises Are Leading the Next Phase of Grid Evolution by Leveraging Microgrids
10:30 am - 10:45 am
Speaker: Vienna Zhou, CEO & Founder - TROES Corp.
As Atlantic Canada accelerates electrification and renewable integration, a growing flexibility gap is emerging between rising demand and traditional grid expansion timelines. This session explores how grids and enterprises are deploying behind-the-fence DERs and modular microgrids to secure capacity, manage risk, and actively support grid moderation.
Unlocking Grid-Friendly Electrification: The Role of Thermal Storage and BTES
10:45 am - 11:00 am
Speaker: James Bererton, Chief Innovation Officer - THERMAstor
As utilities and municipalities accelerate building electrification, grid capacity and peak demand constraints are emerging as critical barriers to decarbonization at scale. While heat pumps and district energy systems are widely promoted, thermal storage remains under-integrated in most planning and procurement frameworks.
This presentation introduces Borehole Thermal Energy Storage (BTES) as a form of long-duration thermal storage that enables grid-friendly electrification for campuses, districts, and large buildings. Drawing on recent feasibility studies and implemented projects across Canada and the U.S., the session demonstrates how integrating BTES into Thermal Energy Networks (TENs) can reduce peak electrical demand by up to 60%, improve system resilience, and materially lower lifecycle costs compared to conventional geoexchange or air-source solutions alone.
The discussion focuses on system-level outcomes rather than component-level design, addressing how BTES supports utility objectives, aligns with municipal climate plans, and improves project bankability through demand flattening and operational certainty. The presentation concludes with practical insights on procurement models, policy enablers, and the role of engineering consultants in de-risking thermal storage infrastructure for owners and investors.
From the Meter Socket Out: Using Existing Grid Assets to Enable Demand Flexibility
11:00 am - 11:15 am
Speaker: Andrew Mitchell, Director, Solutions - Tantalus
United Illuminating (UI), a Connecticut IOU serving approximately 341,000 customers, needed a path to demand flexibility that didn't require replacing infrastructure it already owned. UI partnered with a Tantalus-led consortium including GE Appliances, Savant, NREL, and UConn's Eversource Energy Center to deploy behind-the-meter load control across 1,500 residential homes in Bridgeport, targeting up to 7 kW of controllable load per home.
The deployment used existing meter sockets as the connection point, treating water heaters as thermal storage and smart circuit modules to manage additional loads, all commanded through the TRUSense Gateway on top of legacy metering infrastructure. This session shares what that architecture looks like in practice, what the regulatory sandbox structure made possible, and what other utilities can take away for their own demand flexibility programs.
April 14, 2026
AI, Digitalization & Cybersecurity for a Modern Grid
11:30 am - 12:30 pm - Ballroom B
Securing the Distributed Grid: Defending Against Service Disruption Attacks
11:30 am - 11:45 am
Speakers: Thomas Buijs, Global Product Specialist - Transformer Monitoring and diagnostic Services - Vicky Desjardins, Security Consultant, Cyber Defense - Hitachi
For almost ten years, ransomware was the biggest threat in cybersecurity. Now, in 2026, the threat landscape has changed alongside the geopolitical climate.
Service disruption is the aim of multiple attacks, including, but not limited to, ransomware, wiperware, data-destruction malware, and denial-of-service attacks. Targeting power grids to destabilize countries is not novel. Some of the most well-known attacks on power grids include the attack by the Russian APT group targeting Ukraine’s power grid (2015) and, more recently, Poland's power grid in December 2025. The attack in Poland targeted the distributed edge of the grid: the RTUs and communication systems managing dozens of smaller generation sites, rather than the centralized control systems that were attacked in other incidents in Ukraine.
This shift reflects the changing nature of electric grids, as countries like Poland add more distributed renewable generation. While the attack did not result in power outages (if it had, about half a million users would have been affected), attackers gained access to operational technology systems critical to grid operations and disabled key equipment at the site, rendering it beyond repair. Unlike previous grid attacks that focused on centralized infrastructure, these distributed energy systems are more numerous, rely heavily on remote connectivity, often receive less cybersecurity investment, and present more opportunities for attack. Researchers found that the data-wiping malware used was DynoWiper.
Optimizing Zero-Emission Vehicle Operations with AI-Driven Fleet Charging
11:45 am - 12:00 pm
Speaker: David Verbich, VP of Government and Utilities - BetterFleet
As fleets transition to zero-emission vehicles, new challenges emerge in charging logistics, cost management, and fleet readiness. Static planning tools fall short in handling variables like battery performance, grid limits, and real-time operations. This presentation explores how Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and Digital Twin technology transform fleet electrification by automating and optimizing charging at scale.
A Digital Twin acts as a living virtual model of each vehicle’s energy use, charging infrastructure, and route. By combining data on battery health, vehicle physics, driver behavior, environment, and grid economics, it enables a fleet-first Charging Management System (CMS) to make precise, real-time decisions. ML models learn from live and historical data, refining forecasts for charging time, energy use, and scheduling efficiency.
AI further drives autonomous control, dynamically adjusting charge power and dispatch to balance readiness, reduce costs, and protect batteries. By analyzing charging data and weather forecasts, it refines range predictions, anticipates bottlenecks, and adapts schedules to maintain reliability under all conditions.
With AI- and ML-driven insights, fleets can ensure vehicles are charged when needed while avoiding excess energy costs and minimizing battery wear. Attendees will also see how predictive maintenance reduces downtime, route-aware modeling prevents over- or under-charging, and time-of-use pricing drives major savings. Finally, the session looks ahead to AI’s growing role in battery health, autonomous dispatch, and energy trading (V2G), offering a roadmap for fleets to deploy zero-emission vehicles efficiently, reliably, and cost-effectively.
Securing the Modern Grid: Navigating NERC-CIP Compliance in an Era of Energy Transformation
12:00 pm - 12:15 pm
Speaker: Mario Carpanzano, Operational Technology, Cybersecurity Specialist - Schneider Electric
Electric utilities are undergoing one of the most significant transformations in the history of the power sector. Grid modernization initiatives—including electrification, energy storage, distributed energy integration, and emerging technologies such as hydrogen—are rapidly reshaping how energy infrastructure is designed and operated. At the same time, utilities must continuously align with evolving cybersecurity regulations established by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation Critical Infrastructure Protection (NERC-CIP) standards.
Utilities frequently face shifting realities such as:
- Evolution in the threat landscape
- Changes in Low, Medium, and High Impact asset classifications of the regulation
- Evolving thresholds for asset designation
- Continuous updates to regulatory requirements, including new provisions (ex: Article 15, 03-2026)
As utilities introduce new digital technologies and operational platforms to support grid innovation, the number of connected systems across operational technology environments continues to grow. These additional technologies expand the cyber attack surface of energy infrastructure, increasing both the complexity of security management and the volume of potential cyber threats facing the sector.
The result is a fundamental challenge facing the industry today: modernizing the grid while maintaining strong cybersecurity posture and regulatory compliance.
The Case for Now: Why Atlantic Canada Must Accelerate AI and Digital Investment in the Energy Sector
12:15 pm - 12:30 pm
Speaker: Sawan Dhaliwal, Executive Director, Digital and Innovation Advisory, WSP
While most organizations debate value of AI pilot projects, the world's leading energy companies have already moved to production at scale — and the results are no longer theoretical. Duke Energy's AI-driven self-healing grid prevented 1.5 million outages in a single year. Enel's predictive maintenance cut equipment incidents by up to 90% and boosted energy theft recovery by 300%. National Grid's Triton digital twin compressed network planning from over a year to weeks. Google DeepMind's machine learning increased the value of wind energy by 20% by predicting output 36 hours ahead. These are not experiments. They are operational capabilities delivering billions in measurable value.
Canada cannot afford to watch from the sidelines. The country and sector face a convergence of forces — a 28,000-worker shortage by 2028, an 80% surge in cyberattacks on energy infrastructure, a record $8.5 billion in annual climate damage, significant renewable energy targets — AI and digitalization investments represent a common denominator with cascading benefits across all of these challenges.
This presentation maps the global AI frontier in energy — from predictive maintenance and digital twins to agentic systems and self-healing grids. It closes with two WSP case studies that prove the path from ambition to operational capability is shorter than most assume: a comprehensive ML-driven Climate Risk and Vulnerability Assessment for a Canadian utility, and GUARD, an AI-powered decision intelligence platform for real-time grid risk management.
The audience will leave with data to back your own cases for investment, a clear understanding of where to start, and the confidence that proven approaches exist today.