February 11, 2015
Waterloo, Ontario
Natural Resources Canada and SDTC
The Honourable Diane Finley, Minister of Public Works and Government Services, on behalf of the Honourable Greg Rickford, Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources and Minister for the Federal Economic Development Initiative for Northern Ontario, today announced funding of $1.8 million to support the development of clean technologies in southwestern Ontario. The funding was provided through Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC)’s SD Tech Fund™.
Miovision Technologies Inc. — Adaptive Transportation Management – Efficient Traffic Routing
Sector: Transportation
Environmental Benefits: Climate Change (primary), Clean Air (co-benefit)
SDTC funding: $1,400,000
Total project value: $5.1 million
Cars in urban centres spend as much as a quarter of their time idling at intersections, wasting fuel and emitting greenhouse gas emissions. Current solutions use rule-based functions and pre-defined scripts for a given set of traffic conditions (timers, recognition of peak usage) to flow vehicles through a given intersection. Miovision’s adaptive traffic signal control system “watches” an intersection using a set of integrated technologies, including wireless connectivity, cloud-based computing and a single 360° camera. The system is capable of learning and analyzing real-time conditions, as often as 10 times per minute, causing the traffic lights to change in order to optimize traffic flow and reduce idling. The technology could reduce travel time — and related fuel need and environmental impacts — by over 20 percent.
Consortium Partners:
Miovision Technologies Inc.
Region of Waterloo
Region of Wood Buffalo
CrossChasm Technologies Inc. — FleetCarma Smart-Charging
Sector: Transportation
Environmental Benefits: Climate Change (primary), Clean Air (co-benefit)
SDTC funding: $430,000
Total project value: $1.3 million
The number of plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) in the United States is forecast to grow from approximately 296,000 in 2014 to more than 2.7 million in 2023. The need to charge this increasing number of PEVs is putting pressure on electricity generation and distribution during peak power demand periods of the day. This pressure can be reduced if the PEVs are enrolled in a smart-charging program. Smart-charging uses real-time grid conditions to charge electrical vehicles efficiently: knowing when to draw on the conventional grid and when to involve renewable energy. An obstacle to smart-charging is that each vehicle manufacturer has its own system for tracking and logging a PEV fleet’s usage and need for recharging; thus, having vehicle-side data across models and manufacturers is necessary. CrossChasm’s FleetCarma C5 logger is able to read proprietary signals from 37 different electric vehicle models, including all PEVs sold in North America and Europe. It will combine the vehicle’s current battery state of charge with the EV owner’s charging preferences to determine the optimal charging schedule for the owner and signal to the grid operator the availability of the charger for demand response. From a commercialization standpoint, the major outcome of this project is the validation of the FleetCarma Smart Charging System and the associated benefits of knowing and predicting how to accommodate the energy needs of a growing PEV market.
Consortium Partners:
CrossChasm Technologies
Burlington Hydro Inc.
NB Power, Powertech Labs Inc.
Siemens Canada Ltd.