The City of Summerside and BluWave-ai completed the first 100 per cent solar energy powered concert in North America. This feat took place on the first stop of the 2022 Canadian Tour of globally renowned Canadian musician, Bryan Adams, at the Credit Union Place in Summerside, Prince Edward Island on August 31, 2022.
The concert was run indoors at night leveraging solar and battery solutions. This milestone for BluWave-ai and Summerside is building of off their shared project, the Canadian Smart Grid AI Center of Excellence at the City of Summerside, announced earlier this year.
Leveraging the BluWave-ai energy optimization platform running in the cloud, BluWave-ai Edge and BluWave-ai Center, the partners were able to predict solar production on the concert date. Through this they could store sufficient solar capacity in a 890 kWh battery to cover the projected energy demand of the concert such as lighting, audio equipment, and air conditioning. With a day of immense solar fluctuations, the system was able to operate the building in advance of the concert while storing enough solar energy to drive the concert in the evening.
Once the concert started, the automated platform took over to detect the increased load created by the concert and peripheral elements and managed the stored solar energy to supply the concert load over the three hour period as the facility used 1173 kWh. The total incremental energy from the concert was 454.5 kWh compared to regular days.
During the concert the BluWave-ai system delivered 496kWh of time-shifted green solar power via the battery or an average of 165kW per hour more covering the entire needs of the concert and associated climate control.
To showcase the performance of the BluWave-ai Canadian Smart Grid Center of excellence which works with Summerside’s wind farm, solar array, battery storage, grid connection, smart metering assets, the cloud-based AI optimization platform was able to deliver a 100 per cent solar powered concert with less than 24 hours to configure, commission, and operationalize to support the new demand of the system to support the green rock concert.
“As a testament to the robustness and flexibility of the BluWave-ai energy optimization platform, and with very short notice, the system was able to manage energy use at the arena to supply the concert with 100% solar energy,” said Devashish Paul, CEO of BluWave-ai. “Once the constraints were identified, the automated platform took over. This proved a compelling use case for time-shifting solar energy which is applicable for large commercial enterprises, electric vehicle fleets and for supporting the grid with demand response and resiliency without resorting to diesel backup generators and shows another example of our company’s live real-time deployments on streaming data and renewable energy assets.”
“Summerside is committed to growing our net zero economy and leading PEI’s Clean Tech Innovations has invested in the smart grid, building renewable energy generation and creating the CUP Arena microgrid with the solar and battery energy storage system from Samsung C&T. We brought in BluWave-ai as a partner to set up the Canadian Smart Grid AI Center of Excellence and provide the AI-enabled control of the city smart grid,” said Mike Thususka, Summerside’s director of Economic Development.
“We continue to invest in our green future and by 2023 with the Sunbank solar and storage facility, Summerside will be running off 70% renewable energy with an eye to hit 100% in the very near future. Industries setting up operations in Summerside may be eligible for various clean tech and first customer experiences using Summerside’s leading edge infrastructure which we demonstrated at the concert working with our partners BluWave-ai.”
Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC) has been a supporter of BluWave-ai’s data-driven AI technology since 2018. “What better way to showcase the power of this homegrown Canadian innovation than by running a major concert event from one of our country’s rock icons off of solar energy! Congratulations to the team at BluWave-ai and the City of Summerside for leading the way in making the entertainment industry more sustainable as we move towards Net Zero,” said Leah Lawrence, president of SDTC.
Featured image credit: Bernard Bodo / Getty Images.
