Dear Editor,
For someone who is always so critical of others’ research work, Mr. Mike McTaggart’s letters never fail to amuse.
Using Mr. McTaggart’s own research methodology, I proved that car accidents in Ontario were practically non-existent between 2015 and 2025.
How? I only counted the ones that involved Teslas.
How could someone hoping to convince Meaford that Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) are safe, direct Meaford to a Tesla website that tracks Tesla Megapack fires?
By 2024 Tesla had 15% of BESS installations.
Why ignore the other 85% of the world’s BESS fires when attempting to prove BESS safety?
That’s an easy one. Because the results for ALL of the Battery Energy Storage System locations are much scarier than the cherry-picked Tesla numbers presented last week. The truth is much worse.
Ignore Tesla Fire. It will only mislead you. If you want the truth about BESS fires, you want to hear about ALL the BESS installation fires. Not just the Tesla ones.
You could try the BESS Failure Incident Database instead. It tracks the true danger to you and your family. Not the puny amount Tesla failures alone represent. You’ll find that despite billions of dollars spent to make battery grid storage sites safer, the number of fires and dangerous situations at ALL battery sites continue to number in the teens. Every year.
Take the USA. “There have been 26 battery fires in the U.S. from 2012 to 2025. 22 of these fires have occurred since 2019.”
Or Korea. “South Korea experienced a series of 28 consecutive battery fires, causing a near paralysis of the nation’s energy storage market. The fires resulted in significant financial losses, estimated at over $32 million USD, and led to the shutdown of hundreds of BESS units.”
And “The EPRI BESS Failure Incident Database presently has 95 entries”. That number climbs higher and higher every year. By numbers in the teens.
Since they are based on more proven, simpler, and much, much safer technology – water and a hill – pumped storage plants don’t catch fire.
Mr. McTaggart often states in his letters that he will not attend a TCE Information Session in Meaford. He believes corporations are unreliable sources. That corporations won’t tell the truth. Corporations don’t deserve the hour of time it requires for him to learn the facts and provide what he needs to finally abandon his fairy tales. His chosen fairy tales about pumped storage installations in general, and specifically, TCE’s.
Well, I’m sorry. What exactly does he think Tesla is? A charity? A Government? A university or college?
Tesla is a corporation! A very large and wealthy corporation serving their own interests. Just like the corporation Mr. McTaggart warns us can’t be trusted. Because they’re both corporations!
If Tesla was holding Information Sessions he’d refuse to go. But he’d like YOU to visit Tesla’s website and believe what THAT corporation says.
Is everyone else seeing a big inconsistency problem here?
The Quebec pension plan (CDPQ) purchased a 25% interest in two UK pumped storage plants (First Hydro Company). In 2024. One, in Dinorwig, is 41 years old. The other, in Ffestiniog, is 62 years old.
The price CDPQ paid for their 25% share in the company valued all of First Hydro Company at two billion pounds sterling. Or $3.693 billion dollars Canadian.
That’s the value of two pumped storage plants with an average age of 51.5 years.
What Mr. McTaggart naively refers to as “This TCE pumped storage project with a claimed 50-year longevity could quickly become an expensive, obsolete ‘white elephant’” is in reality far more likely to be seen by expert and very competent investment managers as an extremely valuable asset following 50 years of use.
$3.693 billion is a big valuation for two ‘white elephants’. I guess they don’t really become white elephants in real life. In fairness to Mr. McTaggart, an amateur can never understand valuations of infrastructure the way skilled professionals do. In this case his error is both understandable and expected.
If one truly believes the proposed reservoir site for the Meaford pumped storage plant risks toxic metals and unexploded shells entering Georgian Bay, then one must also believe the reservoir will be built on part of the Base that has been shelled in the past. There are no shell fragments or unexploded shells in places that have historically never been shelled.
For clarity, Meaford Hall has never been shelled. That’s why it has no shell fragments or unexploded shells in it.
This is so simple a child in grade school could understand it.
Things simply can’t be somewhere – if they haven’t been put there – somehow – before now.
The easy-to-understand pictures available at TCE Information Sessions show TCE’s pumped storage facility would be built close to where the administrative buildings at the Base are located. If you believe that Georgian Bay will be polluted with toxic metals from there, you also have to believe that the Army has been training for over 80 years by shelling their own personnel and buildings. You have no other choice.
Otherwise? Do you think toxic metals walked there through the bush from kilometres away? And plan to climb the fence and jump in the minute they open the new reservoir?
I wasn’t sure I should trust a corporation. I wanted to be absolutely sure about this. So, I asked a veteran.
The Canadian Armed Forces don’t shell their own people and HQ buildings during training.
And the veteran thinks I’m an idiot for asking.
Finally, I have personally always found Mr. Dave MacDougall’s letters to be accurate and very thoroughly researched.
And they are refreshingly honest.
Bruce Mason, Meaford
