Utility Interconnection Studies and Submissions
Interconnection is where good electrical design meets utility process, and the process is different in every province — sometimes different inside one city. Furano Pacific Consulting prepares the studies and the submissions, and manages the correspondence through to approval.
We work regularly with BC Hydro in British Columbia and with SaskPower in Saskatchewan, and we are licensed to practise in Alberta and Ontario.
Service connections, load additions and generation
Load calculations to CEC Section 8 supporting the service size requested.
Utility application packages, single-line diagrams and metering arrangements in the form each utility expects.
Coordination of the utility's supply-side scope against the customer-side design, so the interface point is agreed early rather than discovered late.
Fault level confirmation at the new service, which feeds directly into equipment selection.
Generation interconnection
Distributed generation interconnection, including solar, standby and cogeneration, against the requirements each utility publishes for the relevant voltage class and size threshold.
Protection requirements, anti-islanding and the settings that go with them.
Study submissions and responses to utility comments through to a signed interconnection agreement.
Saskatoon Light and Power, and crossing provincial lines
Inside the City of Saskatoon, distribution is operated by Saskatoon Light and Power, a municipal utility separate from SaskPower with its own interconnection guideline and its own service requirements. Projects get delayed when a submission is prepared against the wrong set of rules. If your site is inside the city boundary, this is the first thing to confirm.
Crossing the border
The technical engineering is largely portable between provinces. The process is not: application sequencing, study thresholds, who pays for what, and the documentation each utility expects all differ. Firms that work in one province tend to assume their home process applies everywhere. Working across BC, Alberta and Saskatchewan is the reason we do not.
Common questions
How early should the utility be engaged? Earlier than feels necessary. Utility study and construction queues, not engineering, are the usual critical path on a service upgrade. A load addition confirmed at concept stage costs nothing; the same conversation at tender stage costs a season.
What does the utility actually need from us? A defensible load calculation, a single-line showing the point of interconnection and protection, metering arrangement, and — for generation — protection settings and anti-islanding provisions. Submissions get returned most often for an unsupported load number or an incomplete protection scheme.
Does a solar or battery installation always need a study? Small residential-scale connections usually run under a standard process. Anything commercial, anything that can export, and anything that will run islanded needs the interconnection reviewed properly, because protection and anti-islanding are where these projects fail.
Can you deal with the utility on our behalf? Yes. We prepare the submission, answer the technical queries and carry the file through to approval, so the questions land with an engineer rather than with your project manager.
We are adding EV charging. Is that a load addition? Almost always, and a large one. Charging load is also unusually peaky, so the load calculation matters more than the connected kW suggests. We size against measured site data where it exists rather than against nameplate.