Elexicon Annual Reports

Electric vehicles, smart grids, distributed energy resources, battery storage, micro grids and advanced smart meter functionalities are just a few examples of the technologies that are transforming the ways we will meet the growing energy demands and expectations of our customers as regulations permit.

As the fourth largest municipally-owned electricity distribution company in Ontario, we understand electrification will become a key driving force in our transition to net zero. Addressing emissions will be critical to decarbonizing the economy, and ultimately mitigating the impacts of climate change.  We have a responsibility to our customers, our communities, shareholders and environment to ensure those sustainable solutions continue to remain affordable and reliable for both home and business. We have a 99.9% service delivery record of providing safe and reliable electricity to our customers and community that we are committed to upholding.

This past year, Elexicon Energy embarked on year two of its five-year Strategic Plan. In the first year, we were primarily focused on grounding the organization in the strategy’s four strategic pillars of Customer Centricity, Operational Excellence, Economic Development and Strategic Investment.  The development of a new strategic delivery office was initiated to ensure critical initiatives are delivered on time and on budget. In year two, we enjoyed a fresh outlook from our revitalized Executive Leadership Team, as Indrani Butany-DeSouza joined us as President and CEO. We also thanked Rob Scarffe for his 21 years of service when he retired as Vice-President of Customer Experience in June and welcomed Kriston Romano into the role. Together, Board and Management re-examined the needs of the organization to modernize its operations and begin preparing for the energy transformation underway.

With the rollout of multiple vaccines, we announced that our employees would be shifting to a hybrid workplace model to improve work-life balance, promote better collaboration and work relationships and increase productivity and employee satisfaction. Elexicon Energy also made a significant commitment to enhancing equity, diversity and inclusion in the workplace, becoming the first energy company in Canada to sign the expanded Leadership Accord with Electricity Human Resources Canada. The accord focuses on gender equality in the electricity sector as well as expanding its reach to racialized and under-represented groups. It is our goal to create a workplace that reflects the rich and diverse communities that we serve.

Through the pandemic we continued our focus on our customer.  Working together with government, we implemented measures to help those who struggled financially. Our committed team of customer care advisors ensured various financial assistance programs were available to our customers to help reduce the economic stress of COVID-19. Our customers are our top priority, which is why our customer satisfaction rating remains high at 97 per cent in 2021. We achieve this high standard by making continuous investments in our customer experience.

Like many other utilities, Elexicon Energy has been affected by rapidly evolving technology advancements, aging infrastructure and increased demand for energy resources. In 2021 we invested $22.6 million to maintain our distribution system reliability and an additional $15.8 million to expand the system to meet service territory growth.  In North Pickering construction is underway on our first fully owned municipal transformer station and designs were developed for a new Operations Centre in Belleville. We also unveiled Canada’s first pre-planned residential micro grid community. This first of its kind community includes a rooftop solar array, lithium-ion battery energy storage; electric vehicle charging stations; innovative smart metering system for community use; and an integrated distribution energy service platform and is a showcase of the future public electric utility. These investments will provide our customers with reliable, sustainable, and affordable energy services and ensure we can continue to meet the rapidly changing expectations of our customers, shareholder and stakeholders.    In total, we now boast an asset base of $520.6 million including property, plant and equipment (“PP&E”) as well as other intangible assets.

Finally, we continued to work with the provincial government, our shareholder municipalities and the Region of Durham to advance access to broadband internet, climate change objectives, and economic development opportunities; this included supporting the coordination of pole attachments so that every customer in our service territory has internet access, the electrification of transportation, and new greenfield development to help unlock critical housing needed in Ontario. We are enthusiastic about continuing to progress these partnership and actively support community investment.

We would like to thank all our frontline workers and our employees for their hard work and commitment this past year. We are proud of your efforts and look forward to growing Elexicon together in the coming years.