History

Elletrica was founded in 2004 by Alex Bettencourt. He used his experience gained at a large consultancy working on the deregulation of power markets throughout North America to start a new specialized firm embedded within the operation of the electric utility.

The first five years Elletrica focused on modernizing and transforming the utility control room. The firm aided one of North American largest utilities in consolidating five control rooms into one integrated control room with both transmission, distribution and trouble operations under one roof. Elletrica was engaged not only in the consolidation but also the establishment of the backup control centre and the required emergency protocols that are still in place to this day for physical, technical, cyber and pandemic emergencies. Once consolidated, Elletrica and its small team of consultants worked on a transformation project of control room operations, an upgrade to its Outage Management System and the implementation of NERC CIP standards.

The second five years were focused on smart grid. Due to Elletrica’s success in handling special projects for control rooms, it was selected to lead the Distribution Management System (DMS) project by the operations group in 2009. In this capacity, it established some of the first requirements, use cases and design for Advanced Distribution Management Systems in the industry. Elletrica was tasked with leading the business case development and plan for a 30-year grid modernization initiative and making the case to the regulator. Through multiple rounds of corporate board and regulator approvals, Elletrica was able to win its client the first ten years of funding for its $1B+ grid modernization plan.

The last five years has been focused on whole utility modernization. As Elletrica was instrumental in establishing the grid modernization program and winning the regulatory approval for funding, it was tasked with leading the execution of that program. As the overall lead, Elletrica was successfully able to implement all the elements of the grid modernization program. This included:

• the upgrade to its Advanced Distribution Management System (ADMS) to provide a control platform for a modernizing distribution grid;

• the establishment of a Distributed Energy Resource Management System (DERMS) to act as the core of new Non-Wires Alternative scheme;

• the creation of a big data analytics platform that brings together operational, asset and customer data to enable data-driven decision making;

• the piloting of some of the first smart thermostat and smart electric water heater demand response programs;

• the use of smart meters in operations as a means of gaining situational awareness on the scope of outages;

• the establishment of distribution automation standards and an aggressive rollout program for automated switches, reclosers and communicating fault current indicators.

As grid modernization was at the forefront of utility innovation, Elletrica was often driving innovation on other fronts for its utility clients. It pioneered business concepts in the areas of community solar, utility-owned energy services businesses, behind-the-meter generation, and electric vehicle charging networks.

Today, Elletrica is advising multiple leading utility clients on their strategy for grid modernization.

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Elletrica prides itself in being true partner with our clients. Due to the nature of our work, we embed ourselves with our clients for these long engagements and become integral parts of our client’s organization. We believe it is important for us to use the term “we” when speaking about the work we do at our clients.

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Activities & Affiliations

• Founder of SmartGrid Canada
• Canadian Representative to Mission Innovation
• Adviser to Parliamentary Committee on Natural Resources