Editor,
BATTERIES! PUMPED STORAGE!
BATTERIES! PUMPED STORAGE!
Ladies and Gentlemen, please.
May I suggest that the issue here, which involves Canada’s energy future, is not what kind of storage is the best idea, but whether storage itself is the best idea.
If we want a future of inexpensive, plentiful 24-7-365 power, is it better to increase storage or to increase supply?
Storage adds cost. It adds cost by losing a percentage of the power during the process of storage and release. It adds cost because the power is sold back to the grid at a higher price. This higher price includes paying for the cost of the storage infrastructure, operations, insurance and profit to the storage company.
It is said that the Community Benefit Agreement will add up to $75,000,000 for Meaford over time. An appealing prospect. But that $75,000,000 will come from increased prices for electrical power paid for by Meaford homeowners and businesses over time as well.
Increasing supply lowers cost.
It grows the industry.
It grows the economy.
It provides jobs.
It gives Canada the inexpensive, plentiful 24-7-365 power to attract more of the energy-intensive industries of the future.
Right now, Canada is among the four countries with the lowest cost per KWh…11 cents. (Ontario’s is slightly higher at 13.2 cents. German households pay 38 cents. The Irish pay 45 cents). This is an economic/industrial advantage Canada must not relinquish.
Finally, the perceived need for storage was based on the assumption that an ever larger percentage of our power would come from intermittent sources: solar and wind. Storage would serve our needs when the others couldn’t.
That assumption is no longer valid as the dream of NetZero is being crushed under the weight of its own high cost.
Ask the Irish.
Grand storage projects and/or banks of batteries do nothing to grow a secure, inexpensive energy future and in turn, the future prosperity of all Canadians.
Increasing supply using 24-7-365 nuclear, thermal and dare I say natural gas sources, will.
Kinder Essington, Mystic, CT
