Hydro-Québec is putting obstacles in the way of those who want to greatly reduce their electricity consumption in extreme cold without subscribing to Hilo.
• Also read: He saves up to $1,000 per winter by “abusing” Hydro’s algorithm.
• Also read: Hydro is struggling to convince customers to reduce heating during extreme cold
“Hydro’s priority is clearly not to enable people to improve their energy consumption habits, but rather to favor its business partners,” criticizes Carl de Billy, a software developer who has “automated to death” his home to achieve this To reduce electricity consumption possible during the severe cold of winter.
During the “peak events” announced by Hydro-Québec, he significantly reduces his heating, switches off his water heater, stops charging his electric car and stops using his large appliances. Hydro rewards him for his efforts through dynamic pricing (winter credit or flex tariff). The same principle applies to subscribers of Hydro-Québec's Hilo home automation service.
However, Mr de Billy has to manually enter the start and end times of the winter peaks into his home automation system. For what? Because Hydro-Québec refuses to make this information available on its open data website. If this information were easily accessible, home automation systems could use it to automatically adjust heating and appliances during peak times.
The situation is different for Hilo subscribers and customers who have thermostats from the Quebec company Sinopé. Hydro sends peak event signals to Hilo and Sinopé devices, allowing automatic adjustment without human intervention.
To have direct access to the signals, “I have to subscribe to Hilo to have a system that is less efficient than mine,” laments Carl de Billy.
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Patents are organized
Enthusiasts have developed various homemade software, notably available for free on the hydroqc.ca website, to retrieve announcements of peak events that Hydro-Québec publishes on its customer portal. The problem is that the national company makes changes to its website regularly and without notice. The authors of the software then have to “debug” it.
“We have been taking steps for several years [pour que les signaux de pointe soient facilement accessibles]. We know there are people internally at Hydro who have pushed this project forward, but it is being blocked. The setup would not be complicated, it just requires a minimum of will to do it,” says Mathieu Dallaire, one of the managers of hydroqc.ca.
Mathieu Dallaire with kind permission
“This is an option that we are studying, but it requires prior technological development,” replies Cendrix Bouchard, spokesman for Hydro-Québec.
Companies are also affected
Hydro's reticence on this matter is also hurting companies that have automated energy systems.
“We have almost 200 customers whose daily electricity consumption we monitor to ensure that their energy profiles are and remain optimized,” says Jean-Michel Carter from the specialist company HD Energy.
“I’m not denigrating Hilo,” Mr. Dallaire insists. It is perfect for someone who is not that tech savvy and wants to get started. The sad thing is that it's not more open to people who have existing systems in place. We want to strive to reduce our consumption and give ourselves the tools to make our job easier.”
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