How Grid Innovation Leads to Lower Energy Costs at Saint John Energy

**Bryce Yonker** (0:00)
Welcome to GridPulse, I'm Bryce Yonker with Grid Forward. Today we have with us Ryan Mitchell. Ryan is coming from Saint John Energy, and he's the CEO there. Ryan, thanks for being on.

**Ryan Mitchell** (0:14)
Hi, Bryce. Well, thanks for having me. Appreciate your interest in our story and our journey over at Saint John Energy.
I'm an engineer with an MBA, and I did spend the first part of my career within telecommunications, and more specifically within the Bell group of companies, primarily leading business transformation planning and the introduction of new technologies. About 10 years ago, I transitioned into the energy sector, and I'm now in my fifth year as president and CEO of Saint John Energy. And I would say that that transition into energy, it really began through conversations that I had with Ray Robinson, the former CEO of Saint John Energy. Ray got me really excited about the future of electricity and believed that experience from the telecommunications sector would help turn some of the industry's challenges into opportunities. He saw the potential for a small, nimble utility like Saint John Energy to embrace disruption, new ideas, and he really wanted to see how far and how quickly we could move into the future. And I have to tell you, Bryce, my time at Saint John Energy has been a lot of fun, and I remain extremely bullish about the future of electricity and the role Saint John Energy can play in helping to shape it.

**Bryce Yonker** (1:28)
Well, it sounds like you guys have a lot of exciting stuff. We will dive into that, but maybe before we do, tell us a little bit about Saint John Energy. Who are you guys? What community do you serve? You mentioned you're a smallish, so tell us about the organization.

**Ryan Mitchell** (1:44)
Yeah, sure thing, Bryce. Well, we are a 100-year-old utility that I think I can say has decided not to act our age. We are a community-owned purely electric utility serving St. John, New Brunswick, so up in Canada. And St. John is Canada's oldest incorporated city. We happen to be home to the country's largest oil refinery and one of the country's major ports. We're about an eight-hour drive northeast of Boston and about an hour from the main border.
Although we are a distribution utility, we are a bit unique in that we do more than operate poles, wires and substations. We also retail electricity and we set our own rates. And we do work directly with customers behind the meter through things like heat pump and water heater rentals, EV chargers and other electrification services.
To put our size into perspective, we do distribute about one terawatt hour of electricity each year. We are very much a winter peaking utility. And I would say that we're probably best known for the reliability of our system, our focus on affordability, and for being innovative.

**Bryce Yonker** (3:01)
So let's talk a bit about what some of the main drivers are for you all. You mentioned your fairways north, so I'm sure you got to harden on the winter system. What are some of the challenges and the drivers that are priorities for you all there in the system that you run?

**Ryan Mitchell** (3:18)
Right. So in answering that Bryce, I'll share a little bit about our cost structure because I think that will help inform why we're focusing on some of the things that we are focusing on. So we are a wholesale customer of the provincial utility and our monthly energy bill is comprised of two components, an energy component and a demand component.
The energy amount is approximately $95 Canadian, a megawatt hour, and the demand component is quite punitive at $20,000 per megawatt for whatever high water mark that we set and hold for at least 15 minutes each month.
So the demand or peak energy, it's very expensive for us. It makes up about 30 percent of our annual budget. And there's not only a financial incentive, but there's also an environmental incentive with that because peak energy often equates two times the greenhouse gas emissions as off-peak electricity generation. So we're very active in terms of looking at how we can drive efficiencies and cost savings through the addition of renewable energy and by reducing peak demand through innovative approaches. You had mentioned with respect to the, you know, the cold winter. So we are a winter peaking utility because most of the homes in our region are heated by electricity. So on peak days, it generally correlates very tightly with the colder temperatures. And the majority of domestic hot water is also heated by electricity. So often peaks are in the morning as people are getting up, grabbing a shower before heading to work or to school. So we spend a lot of time looking at how we can decrease the supply cost of energy and as well how we can reduce those peak charges.