Canada’s minister of natural resources Seamus O'Regan on Wednesday launched a four-year programme that will provide up to CAD 964 million (USD 799.2m/EUR 655.5m) for smart renewable energy and grid modernisation projects.
The Smart Renewables and Electrification Pathways Program (SREPs) will grant direct financial support to eligible projects among established renewables, emerging technologies and grid modernisation schemes. More information on which technologies are included in each category is available in the following table.
| Established Renewables |
Emerging Technologies |
Grid Modernisation |
| Onshore wind |
Offshore wind |
Utility system software and hardware upgrades |
| Solar photovoltaic (including bi-facial) |
Geothermal (heat and/or electricity) |
Hardware or software retrofits to an existing renewable energy |
| Small hydro |
Concentrated solar power (CSP) |
Software or hardware to enable aggregating DERs of 500 kW AC or more (e.g., virtual power plant) |
| |
Energy storage |
Residential and building integrated renewable energy |
| |
Water current, tidal or wave |
Electricity market innovation |
| |
Retrofits to enable grid services on existing renewable energy plants |
Grid monitoring and automation |
| |
Non-utility led grid modernisation projects |
Data management and communication |
| |
|
Demand management |
| |
|
Electric vehicle (EV) integration |
| |
|
Microgrids |
A portion of the funding available under the programme will be reserved for Indigenous-led projects. According to information on SREPs’ web page, those particular projects may qualify for higher levels of support.
The applicants in the established renewables category need to have a minimum net installed capacity of 4 MW if a generating project, or 500 kW if an Indigenous-owned scheme. They must be commercially viable in Canada.
On the other hand, emerging technologies will be considered those that have been successfully deployed at the utility scale in other countries but still not commercially viable in Canada. Heating and storage projects need to have capacities of not less than 40 terajoules (TJ) and 1 MW, respectively. The minimum sizes for generating and Indigenous-owned projects in this category are the same as in established renewables.
Demonstration projects, renewable fuel production projects and non-organic waste-to-power projects will not be considered eligible.
The schemes in all categories can only receive up to CAD 50 million in financing and there is also a limit to the percentage of total cost that can be supported, which is 10% for established renewables, 30% for emerging technologies and 50% for grid modernisation.
(CAD 1.0 = USD 0.829/EUR 0.680)
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Solar project using Silfab modules in Ontario, Canada. Source: Silfab Solar Inc
