This article was published by The Energy Mix on June 6, 2024.
A new electric vehicle education project for Indigenous communities is helping a fly-in First Nation in Manitoba boost its energy self-sufficiency, with a plan to see it partially powered and propelled by EVs.
Launched last summer by sustainability entrepreneur Kent Heinrich and Chief Elvin Flett from St. Theresa Point First Nation, the project aims to remove the knowledge and application barriers that are blocking EV uptake in Indigenous communities in Manitoba and Ontario.
“First Nations communities have a lot on the go and the EV applications, for the most part, aren’t even on their radar,” Kent Heinrich, partner and project manager told Electric Autonomy Canada.
“So we’re out there to share with them the knowledge and assist them as best we can in moving forward in applications.”
(Heinrich received funding for the project last July through Natural Resources Canada’s Zero Emission Vehicle Awareness Initiative (ZEVAI), which also provided funding to Electric Autonomy and to the Green Resilience Project, a joint project by Energy Mix Productions and the Basic Income Canada Network.)
A web-based resource library, an Indigenous-focused EV curriculum, an EV conference dedicated to addressing Indigenous questions and concerns are the first three of four promised deliverables. The Free Ride EV Educational Project is also committed to helping Indigenous communities apply for EV funding.
St. Theresa Point is a fly-in reserve 600 kilometres from Winnipeg, lacking any all-season road connections, and is only eight kilometres end to end. But it is exactly these qualities that could make it an EV act to follow, Electric Autonomy says. The community hopes to use a small fleet of EVs as a backup battery.
Though it’s been connected to the grid since the 1990s, St. Theresa Point suffers outages “at least several times a month, often lasting several hours.”
To begin to address that problem, the community installed a 350-kilowatt solar power system, sufficient to supply its three local schools, last year.
The next step is to build three days’ worth of backup power for that system using a fleet of EVs and vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology.
Should St. Theresa Point be successful in its application to the Zero Emission Transit Fund for a Lion Electric school bus, the community could secure as much as six days’ worth of back-up power.
“When we get that bus, that is going to provide another 200 to 230 kilowatt-hours of extra backup power that we can tie into that system,” Heinrich told EA. “We’re going from three days of redundancy to potentially six.”
The community also plans to electrify its transportation fleet by purchasing a Ford E-Transit van and a Ford F-150 Lightning truck. These vehicles will also supply backup power to the band office.
Heinrich said it’s the very rural and remote nature of places like St. Teresa Point that make EVs such “exceptionally great value.”
Given its tiny size, “you can charge an EV up and drive for a month and not have to charge it again, so it really makes sense.”
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