SUMMERSIDE, P.E.I. — The City of Summerside has started the process to get its battery storage unit underway.
To move the Summerside Sunbank project forward, the city must determine how the solar power farm should be connected to the municipality's existing electric utility to provide energy to the system. Seven companies responded to the city's request for proposals for a system impact study before the March 13 deadline. They were evaluated on six criteria.
The bids ranged from $49,500 from BBA in Mont-Saint-Hilaire, Que., to $360,931 from Schneider Electric based in Rueil-Malmaison, France. The city recently awarded the contract to PowerTech Labs Inc., located in Surrey, B.C., which bid $64,000.
Coun. Cory Snow said he was curious as to why there was such a difference in bid amounts.
“How did we figure out that PowerTech was the right one to go with?”
Greg Gaudet, director of municipal services with the city, said they used the criteria to evaluate and rank the companies one through seven. It included past experience and how each company proposed to connect the batteries to the grid.
“This is the amount of depth the companies will do. Some will have 10 different scenarios for things that can happen while working on the system,” he said.
“Then we looked at scheduling and monitoring for how they will stay on budget for the work and finally the budget itself.”
City staff then had phone interviews with the two companies that scored the highest, providing an opportunity to go over the project objectives and clarify points from the proposal with each firm.
The city has budgeted $65.8 million for the project in this year’s budget with $26.3 million from the federal government and $21.9 million from the province.
