Tesla's smart power grid experiment about to kick off in Canada

Pilot project will serve 300 homes to start with

Tesla's is about to kick off one of its smart power-grid experiments in a small town in Canada.

One of the North American country's main energy companies, Nova Scotia Power, just finished establishing a pilot project based on Tesla's technology to create a more reliable wind power system.

Making use of the electric car giant's Powerwall 2 home batteries, along with utility-grade Powerpack batteries, the 'Intelligent Feeder Project' is taking place in a community located on the boundary of Hants County and the Halifax Regional Municipality in Nova Scotia, called Elmsdale.

The project's goal is to fill the gaps in the electrical grid by topping up the Powerpacks whenever a nearby wind turbine system generates excess power, and delivering that stored energy to local homes when there's an outage or the wind turbines aren't generating enough electricity to power the community on their own.

Backed by Canada's government, the first test run of the project should go live before the end of February, lasting until 2019. Expansion will depend on how effective Tesla's technology is in helping residents while saving money.

"This pilot project is one of a number of innovation initiatives underway to help us learn how technology can help us better serve our customers," Nova Scotia Power said in a description of its YouTube video explaining the project.

"The project involves installing a grid-size battery (Tesla Powerpack) at our Elmsdale substation and 10 residential batteries (Tesla Powerwalls) at homes in the community of Elmsdale, which is partially powered by the wind farm located in Hardwood Lands."

Once the project goes live, the Elmsdale battery station will serve just 300 homes, and only 10 customers have Powerwall 2 batteries. However, all experiments must start small, and if it proves a success, it could easily scale up to serve more people if deemed a viable solution.