Newsletter

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Summerside — A World Leader in Innovation
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HueGO Electric’s LED Streetlight Conversion Project

Companies looking to enter North American markets with foreign technology are challenged to build business cases and market credibility in order to generate sales.

Chinese LED lighting manufacturer, HueGO Electric, a member of the China Gold Fortune International Group, partnered with Summerside Electric to facilitate live product testing, product support, and certification. This followed from meetings with City and Provincial officials about helping CGF to establish a manufacturing presence in Canada. 

HueGO has commenced product deployment and testing, installing over 300 LED streetlights in Summerside and partnering with the community college for full-scale research into product capabilities and performance

The City of Summerside first began working with Beijing’s China Gold Fortune International Group to further the City’s mandate of furnishing an environment in which to grow the economy, further new employment and improve the quality of life for residents. CGF specializes in developing and producing intelligent instruments and next-generation products, which they currently export to Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, South Asia and Central Asia. As a major consumer of every product CGF makes — including LED lighting, smart meters and IC card meters — the Summerside/CGF partnership is proving to be a perfect fit.  
 

Amalgamated Dairies and The Smart Grid Project

How to contain and reduce the cost of energy needed to heat process water for the production of Amalgamated Dairies Limited (ADL) products — milk, ice cream, butter and cheese — and reduce dependency on non-renewable energy sources.

ADL worked directly with the City of Summerside Electric Utility to enable the control of its energy consumption through the use of thermal storage units. After a full engineering feasibility study, 160 kW of thermal storage furnaces were installed to pre-heat process water. 

ADL not only reduced electrical costs while decreasing its use of diesel, but it also maximized the use of clean wind energy through the City’s Smart Grid Project, with an installation payback of just 14 months. 

In addition to lower operational costs, the Smart Grid Project has enabled ADL to provide data to the growing numbers of customers who take into account their suppliers’ sustainability initiatives when making purchase decisions. It has also enabled the company to more closely monitor and react to its energy usage. ADL regards the continued expansion of the City’s Smart Grid Project as a valuable tool for further reductions in operational costs and increasing opportunities for the use of green energy.  
 

Smarter Homes Incentive Program (SHIP)

How to accelerate residential development in Summerside while addressing consumer needs and the greening of the municipality.  

The City of Summerside offered developers the chance to promote new and innovative best practices in residential development while enabling the city to further its Living Lab agenda. The program centered around five key incentives: 1. Conversion to LED street lighting for superior visibility with clearer night skies, less light spill onto private property and fewer outages. 2. Connectivity to the city’s fiber-optic network, allowing homebuyers to save money through technology while helping the environment. 3. Smart meters for savings through informed electricity usage, more accurate billing and automatic notification of repair needs. 4. Free electric vehicle car chargers with participation in the city’s reduced-rate energy storage program. 5. Energy storage utilizing state-of-the-art ETS (electric thermal storage) furnaces, room heaters and water heaters to heat homes and water from wind power with a reduced electricity rate locked in for five years and zero carbon footprint. 

The pilot subdivision sold out in less than one year with over 85% participation in program incentives. 

However smart, however new, however innovative, it is Summerside’s commitment to both the consumer and the environment that is the deciding factor. 
 

About the Summerside Living Lab
 

A Living Lab is a platform for the industry to collaborate with the government in exploring real-world issues and demonstrating how innovation can provide solutions. The overarching goal of Summerside’s Living Lab is to advance innovation and create export development opportunities in partnership with early start-ups or established enterprises while assisting the City’s growth. The Lab brings together partners with a shared vision that will produce results for those who wish to build business models for advanced deployment in earlier stages of product life. With its unique and empowering infrastructure, Summerside is a testbed for firms looking to develop real market solutions, validation, and full-scale deployment of products and services.  
 

In Summerside we understand… 
 

The Problem: A Business faces challenges validating its technology through rapid testing, prototyping and commercialization. Providing product credibility presents a major barrier.

The Solution: A municipality devoted to reducing development time and validation in a fail-fast/fail-cheap environment — a unique opportunity for rapid commercialization.

The Bottom Line: Summerside provides a robust and sophisticated environment with a unique range of empowering assets including its own electrical company, renewable energy and fibre optic network. It operates in a completely open and mutually beneficial collaborative manner.
 

Come and grow with us!
If you are interested in validating your technology for North American markets:

Contact:
Michael Thususka
Director of Economic Development
City of Summerside
275 Fitzroy Street
Summerside PE C1N 1H9
M: 902.432.0103
E: mike@summerside.ca

LET’S BUILD THE FUTURE TOGETHER!