To prepare for the energy transition — that is, the shift away from fossil fuels and toward more efficient and sustainable energy sources, like electricity — we’ll need to invest in our infrastructure at an unprecedented rate. If we don’t, we risk compromising the reliability of our power grid.
Think about your day – from charging your phone to heating your home, from the growing number of electric vehicles on our streets to the innovative industries choosing Ottawa. Electricity is no longer just a convenience; it's the essential current powering our lives and our city's growth.
At Hydro Ottawa, we are seeing this future unfold in real time. More of you are connecting with us for heat pumps, EV chargers, and even your own clean energy sources like solar panels. Businesses, too, are plugging in like never before, with requests for significant power connections at an all-time high to fuel everything from fleet electrification to the AI revolution. But in order to accommodate more of these requests, we need to double down on upgrading our grid now to ensure that Ottawa is poised to handle future energy demands.
Investing in our assets
It takes a big electricity grid to meet the power needs of a sprawling, highly populated region like Ottawa. Across the 1,116 square kilometres of our service area, there are close to 50,000 distribution transformers, 49,000 poles, and more than 6,000 kilometres of overhead and underground cables.
To keep pace with this rapid transformation – and to ensure homes and businesses have power when they need it most – Hydro Ottawa must act quickly. We regularly replace aging infrastructure and renew damaged equipment to minimize the risk of outages and ensure their safe operation. Preventative maintenance to harden our grid and increase its reliability, such as tree trimming, is key to ensuring the longevity of our assets. While maintaining and upgrading this infrastructure is a constant, the scale of change we're facing demands more than routine upkeep. The shift towards electric vehicles, electric heating, and energy-intensive industries isn't a distant possibility – it's happening now. To get ahead of this demand and build a grid ready for a cleaner energy future, we need to invest in our infrastructure development above and beyond what we’ve done in the past to do this.
What lies ahead is significant. In many areas, portions of our electrical grid are decades old, with some components reaching close to a century in service. Over the next 25 years, the scale of infrastructure renewal and expansion required to meet the escalating demand for electricity will likely surpass what was achieved in the grid's entire first century. This demands an unprecedented pace of investment and a focus on innovative solutions to ensure a reliable energy future.
Consider this: historically, we've added a major substation roughly every five years to handle increasing power needs. Over the next five years, we will energize one every single year. This is a seismic shift in how we invest, but it’s necessary to power our region’s growth.
If we don't invest properly in grid resilience, you could be faced with more frequent and longer power outages. Outages would become more widespread as well, challenging our crews to respond and prolonging our power restoration efforts. It could hold back Ottawa's potential to innovate and grow through important upgrades to the electricity grid.
Modernizing our grid
While enhancing the “last mile” of the electricity distribution system with new substations, poles and wires will be essential to keeping up with energy demand, it’s not the only thing we will do. We're also integrating intelligence into our grid through cutting-edge "smart grid" technologies. These innovations give us real-time insights into how you are using electricity, allowing us to adapt dynamically and ensure a reliable supply.
Furthermore, we're empowering you through support for distributed energy resources (DERs) like rooftop solar and battery storage. Imagine generating your own clean power and even feeding excess energy back into the grid to help manage peak demand – it’s a win-win for everyone. Even large power users, like hospitals and commercial buildings, could potentially become more self-sufficient, easing the strain on the broader grid and improving reliability for all customers.
Unlocking these capabilities requires strategic investments in sensors and grid upgrades to handle this two-way flow of energy. Much of our current infrastructure wasn't designed for this, but it's essential for managing the dynamic energy demands of an electrified future.
We’ll also need to be innovative in how we handle power distribution in other ways. That’s why we’re exploring district energy systems, for example — shared networks of hot and cold water pipes that can efficiently bring heating and cooling to multiple buildings in an area. These systems generate, recover and distribute heating and cooling energy through a central energy plant. This approach is far more reliable, cost-effective and environmentally friendly than traditional building-by-building heating and cooling systems. Hydro Ottawa is playing a key role in furthering these types of transformational concepts, including serving as the district energy system operator for Zibi, Ottawa’s first carbon neutral community, The Ottawa Hospital, and a real estate development in the Lebreton Flats area.
Building a more sustainable and reliable community, together
We understand that these significant investments require careful planning and execution.And this isn't a challenge we're facing alone. Utilities across Ontario and Canada are on similar paths, recognizing the urgent need to upgrade their infrastructure. We're all interconnected, part of the same energy ecosystem, and we're working together to build a more sustainable future for everyone.
We stand at a critical juncture. The energy transition demands immediate action to ensure a sustainable and reliable future for Ottawa. The good news is, we've done the groundwork. We know what needs to be done to continue delivering the power you depend on, today and well into the future.
Our commitment is to a more resilient, efficient, and sustainable energy future – one that benefits every Hydro Ottawa customer and strengthens our entire community. That's why we're moving with purpose and speed to keep Ottawa powered and thriving. It’s time to invest in the infrastructure that will power our communities for generations to come.