Our Work

Bidirectional Charging Project Series

For Canada to achieve its emissions reduction targets, increased adoption of zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) is critical. However, perceived barriers, including high battery costs, issues of range anxiety, charger availability, and impact on the electricity grid, hinder the uptake of ZEVs. Technologies such as bidirectional charging, also called vehicle-to-everything (V2X), can help address some of these barriers. V2X capability allows energy from the ZEV's onboard battery to provide auxiliary power to specific loads and buildings or to be sold back to electric utilities. V2X technology can result in a revenue stream for ZEV owners for providing backup power to the grid, significantly reducing emissions by offsetting power generation from non-renewable power generators, and providing flexible solutions to handle peak demand for electric utilities. Although there is interest in how a ZEV battery could power a home, current and prospective ZEV owners in Canada need more knowledge and exposure to V2X to help move from interest to implementation. Many utilities have not yet considered V2X benefits, potential programs, and other strategies that would help meet ZEV users' interests, increase the adoption of ZEVs, and complement their own needs, even though utilities will be the stakeholders most impacted by transportation electrification. The absence of successful V2X demonstrations in Canada has led to a general unawareness about the subject, and V2X demonstrations and research projects are necessary to identify needs, knowledge, and lessons learned for all stakeholders. This series of projects aims to build knowledge and awareness around the positive attributes of V2X to all market segments related to ZEVs, with a specific focus on light-duty ZEV owners, electric utilities, and all levels of government. Activities within this series of projects include: 1. Needs assessments around V2X and ZEV adoption for residential and commercial users. 2. Real-world V2X demonstrations to show potential emissions, cost savings, and grid benefits. 3. Best practice guides for V2X adoption for electric utilities and jurisdictions in Canada, helping to identify innovative V2X programs, financial/environmental benefits, and campaign strategies to increase the positive uptake of ZEVs. 4. Jurisdictional roadmap studies identifying the pathways to V2X technology and program adoption.

Rising to the Upper Tiers: Affordability and Emissions-driven Energy Code Compliance

Adopting the 2020 National Building Code (NBC 2020) brings new compliance requirements and opportunities for energy advisors (EAs) and builders. This project aims to reduce barriers to meeting new and forthcoming code compliance for residential buildings by leveraging the Volta SNAP energy modelling platform. It will simplify code compliance and adoption, ensuring that designers and decision-makers have powerful tools to build affordable, low-emission housing in Canada. <b> This project has the following key objectives: </b> 1. Simplify integrated design processes (IDPs) to provide deeper insights for low-rise housing, producing affordable pathways to higher-tier performance targets. 2. Assist with prescriptive code compliance and highlight untapped cost and energy-saving measures. 3. Develop and/or integrate with costing databases to ensure that low-cost and affordable solutions are highlighted. 4. Automate and simplify calculations around operational and embodied emissions. 5. Produce educational materials to inform potential homeowners of the benefits of high-performance housing.

Supporting Electrification Policy in the GTHA: Facilitating Stakeholder Coordination Through the Integrated Design Process

The electrification of buildings and transportation in the GTHA requires better coordination among stakeholders in the low-rise building sector to eliminate barriers to electrification. Without cross-sectoral approaches, building, transportation, and electrical policy decisions could strain the capacity of the utility grid rather than provide capacity support — exacerbating barriers to electrification. This project aims to demonstrate how coordinated planning led by low-rise building sector stakeholders could reduce electrification barriers and infrastructure costs. Through integrated design process (IDP) activities evaluating example grid-aware, low-rise electrification scenarios, workshop stakeholders will explore how different building code compliance paths, combined with smart loads, bidirectional EV charging, DERs and other measures, could increase the existing grid’s load factor and reduce the need for additional asset capacity. Participating stakeholders will be primed to make small but impactful policy and process changes leveraged to simplify electrification and reduce emissions significantly. <b> This project has the following key objectives: </b> 1. Engage key low-rise building energy and EV stakeholders across the GTHA through a series of IDP workshops. 2. Identify and evaluate key electrification pain points and desired outcomes from the workshops. 3. Design a stakeholder-led analytical process by which to perform the example scenario modelling during each workshop. 4. Collaboratively disseminate and act on the project results (e.g., code consultation and adoption, on-the-ground engineering practice, increased cross-sectoral collaboration and communication).

A Toolkit for Affordability Driven Home Energy Efficiency Retrofits Through Local Improvement Charge Programs

Climate change will make home cooling essential due to increased temperature fluctuations and longer heat waves. However, the cost of adding and using cooling systems can become too expensive for low-income homeowners, including seniors. While incentive programs exist for energy-efficient home retrofits, they can increase housing costs, which is counterproductive for many low- or fixed-income and senior households. The Affordable Home Energy Retrofit Toolkit explores making energy-efficient retrofits affordable for more households, working within Toronto’s existing <a href="https://www.toronto.ca/services-payments/water-environment/environmental-grants-incentives/home-energy-loan-program-help/" target="_blank">**Home Energy Loan Program**</a> to provide innovative retrofits to low-income and senior households. This will help to reduce energy costs, improve health and safety, and allow seniors to age in place. If you are interested in participating in the project or would like more information, please email us at **info@voltaresearch.org**.

An online innovation platform connecting utilities to customers

The Grid Sandbox is an online innovation sandboxing platform for utilities to radically accelerate and scale solutions for a clean, reliable, and affordable electricity grid. It makes it easier for utilities to learn from and engage with their customers, like understanding their evolving loads, behaviours, and preferences for clean energy services — ranging from efficiency, distributed energy resources (DERs), and demand response. The sandbox platform also helps households learn about opportunities to invest in home energy retrofits, self-production, storage, and EV charging infrastructure while making it easy for them to try out new technologies, rates, and utility services. In partnership with a local Calgary utility, a pilot of the platform was launched with eight Calgary homes, giving each access to a free virtual home energy audit, end-use energy consumption and production forecasting, and virtual billing. In exchange, the utility learned from and engaged with participating homes — informing future rate designs and energy service offerings. A series of virtual DER models like solar PV, storage, and smart EV chargers were also developed, allowing customers to virtually install them in their homes. This allows each household to clearly understand the costs, benefits, and impact of adopting these technologies on their bill and lifestyle. The goal of this project was to make developing, testing, and evaluating utility and grid solutions easy and fast, because we don't have another decade to spare when it comes to piloting small-scale climate solutions.

Residential Takeoff and Analytics Tool for Low Carbon Retrofits

Home energy evaluations are integral in ensuring that retrofits are implemented effectively and maximize energy and cost savings potential. However, this process, which involves site visits and extensive data collection and analysis, can be cumbersome and time-consuming. Furthermore, energy efficiency improvements must also result in substantial emissions savings to have an impact on the fight against climate change. This poses a challenge since the traditional convention analyzes primarily energy and cost efficiencies, often with little consideration for emissions or their impact on climate change. Volta Research has developed an easy-to-use software application to streamline the energy assessment and modelling process for existing low-rise residential buildings. The web-based tool provides seamless integration of on-site data collection and off-site follow-up analysis with industry-standard energy modelling software: HOT2000. The tool also provides enhanced, location-specific energy and emissions analytics and retrofit recommendations, helping Certified Energy Advisors save time and provide their clients with the most effective retrofit options. This tool expands our software platform Volta SNAP, which aims to help energy advisors evaluate new buildings. A key output of this project is a holistic energy modelling tool aimed at helping energy efficiency professionals deliver substantial energy and emission savings for Canadian buildings and homeowners.

Preliminary Assessment and Collaboration Tool for Affordable Deep Emissions Reductions on Residential Homes

Canada Greener Homes Grant, Edmonton’s Clean Energy Improvement Program (CEIP), and the Home Energy Retrofit Accelerator (HERA) have selected EnerGuide evaluations conducted by Certified Energy Advisors (EAs) as the means to initiate and measure residential energy efficiency retrofits. While this evaluation process is proven and widely used in Canada, some barriers impact its emissions reduction effectiveness in Edmonton. Specifically, a limited number of EAs regionally limit capacity to meet the increased local demand for evaluations, and the EnerGuide process focuses solely on reducing energy consumption rather than emissions. The scale of the current demand for these programs will outpace the EA industry’s ability to deliver the required evaluations. With NRCan projecting the need for energy evaluations to increase across Canada and the launch of Edmonton’s CEIP and HERA program offerings, the higher demand for evaluations, paired with a limited number of local EAs, may lead to delays in assessments. Because the energy assessment is typically the first step for a homeowner to gather information for the retrofit, a delay in receiving an energy assessment may slow the retrofit decision-making process. As well, an initial energy evaluation typically has an upfront cost for homeowners who may be reluctant to take on this cost without some reassurance of their eligibility for rebate programs or knowledge of the available home improvement options and resulting potential benefits. Even when the energy assessment process runs smoothly, the results obtained focus on retrofit measures for reducing energy consumption. They do not directly address housing affordability or greenhouse gas reductions. Retrofits and energy consumption need to be addressed and implemented with an affordability lens, considering both capital and operational costs. Some retrofits could lead homeowners to believe that reduced energy consumption will reduce GHG emissions and operating costs. In reality, they achieve neither goal due to differences in cost and emission intensity in electricity and other fuels. The energy assessment results also do not thoroughly acknowledge emissions associated with electrical energy use. They also lack a deeper analysis of GHG emissions, such as hourly and marginal emissions considerations, which can strongly impact emissions. The project developed, deployed, and demonstrated a toolset to engage and educate homeowners about home energy retrofits and facilitate their eventual interaction with EAs. It tackled the combined problems of (i) a lack of local EAs to meet the demand for energy evaluations in the Edmonton area and (ii) the lack of an hourly, regional emissions evaluation within the EnerGuide process and the resultant retrofits that EAs highlight to homeowners. The project addressed these problems by providing homeowners with access to a preliminary, survey-based 'mini' energy audit that asks them to answer questions about the features of their home. The toolset analyzes those inputs and recommends potential, tailored energy efficiency measures to the homeowner. The results also include insights into the total cost of ownership for each retrofit package, addressing a stated homeowner need. Finally, the toolset identifies pathways for the homeowners to connect with an EA and move forward with an energy assessment and retrofit incentive programs. Importantly for the City of Edmonton's climate change plan, the tool presents homeowners (and later, EAs) with information that helps educate and guide them to make retrofit decisions that tackle affordability, program accessibility, and effective emissions reductions.