The Honourable John Duncan, Minister of State and Member of Parliament for Vancouver Island North, on behalf of the Honourable Greg Rickford, Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources and Minister for the Federal Economic Development Initiative for Northern Ontario, has announced a new, additional investment of $600,800 as part of Canada’s comprehensive strategy for enhancing innovation and competitiveness under Canada’s ecoENERGY Innovation Initiative (ecoEII).
With support from the government, the University of Victoria’s plug-in electric vehicle (PEV) smart grid project will help generate a better understanding of intermittent renewable electricity sources such as wind, tidal, wave and solar, and the storage potential in electric vehicle batteries. A key part of the project will gather consumer survey data to construct improved technical models of driver behaviours and charging preferences to best prepare for the adoption of electric vehicles in the future. The project will also make use of data from the growing network of charging stations in B.C.
Through ecoEII, the Harper Government is providing $268.2 million over five years (2011–2016) to support research, development and demonstration projects that produce and use energy in a cleaner and efficient manner that will create jobs, generate economic opportunities and help protect the environment.
“Plug-in electrified vehicles represent a tremendous opportunity to reduce the impact of vehicles on the environment and to integrate fluctuating energy sources like wind, wave, and tidal into the grid. We’ll gain a more complete understanding of the real benefits of plugging PEVs into the current B.C. grid,” said Dr. Curran Crawford, Mechanical engineer, lead PEV smart grid project from the University of Victoria .
The Honourable John Duncan said: “Our government is positioning Canada as a global leader in the clean technology sector by supporting innovative projects aimed at producing and using energy in cleaner and more efficient ways. Projects such as the University of Victoria’s powering plug-in electric vehicles project demonstrate how our government is making significant progress in this area, while creating jobs and protecting the environment.”
“As British Columbians make the decision to take the next step and buy an electric vehicle, research into renewable sources of electricity becomes even more important as demand on the power grid increases. The Government of Canada and our provincial government are helping fund this research, which seeks to find solutions that will benefit us all,” said Marvin Hunt, Surrey-Panorama MLA .