Member Spotlight

The Advanced Energy Centre (AEC) is a public-private partnership with the mission of fostering the adoption of innovative energy technologies in Canada, and leveraging those successes and experiences into international markets.  The Centre is a part of MaRS Discovery District, a Canadian registered charity based in Toronto that operates as one of the world's largest urban innovation hubs.  The AEC identifies and removes systemic barriers to the adoption of energy innovation, working with over 170 Canadian ventures in the cleantech and energy sectors, actively developing partnerships that will help bring their technologies to global markets.

AEC and Green Button

The AEC has been a long standing supporter of the Green Button initiative and has been engaged in driving its adoption and roll-out since its very inception.  The AEC Green Button team has been leading the Ontario Energy Data Access Project Working Group with the Ontario Ministry of Energy, to enable improved access to energy data in Ontario.  The AEC has led this working group through the review and adoption of the standard, which includes Green Button Download My Data implementation across over 10 electric utilities and over 60% of Ontario, in addition to two Connect My Data pilots with a few hundred participants between them.

Presently, the AEC is engaged in developing market capacity with utilities, solution providers and consumers to drive Ontario's adoption of the Green Button Connect My Data standard across electricity, natural gas and potentially even water metered data.  For those Ontario companies who have already deployed the standard and developed Green Button enabled solutions, the AEC is actively opening access to larger international markets by promoting the standard in countries such as Chile, Columbia, India and in the European Union.

Looking Forward

The AEC is working with key energy sector stakeholders and supporting the Ontario Government to establish and quantify key use cases that would be unlocked through Ontario's adoption of Green Button for electricity, natural gas and water data.  These quantified Green Button use cases will result in the first comprehensive and quantitative business case for adopting Green Button.  This business case will review the costs and benefits of rolling out Green Button across a large jurisdiction, with hundreds of utilities from electricity, natural gas and water.  Findings from this business case will be used to inform Ontario's policy decisions to mandate the roll-out of Green Button across electricity, natural gas and water data in Ontario.