With everything else that is going on in these crazy times, it has received little public fanfare, but Canada's largest battery storage facility went online earlier this week in Haldimand County, Ontario, deep in the countryside between the city of Hamilton and Lake Erie.
In fact, at 250 MW, the Oneida Energy Storage Project is one of the five largest battery storage facilities in the world. 278 lithium-ion batteries, each about the size of a tractor trailer, are collected together on a site about 10 acres in size, and together they can store enough electricity to power a city of 200,000 (think Oshawa or Sudbury) for an hour. At a stroke, it doubles the province's energy storage capacity.
That might not sound that much, but this is a big deal. It can take a significant amount of surplus power from Ontario's grid during times of surplus, and release it in times of need. This is particularly useful for managing intermittent renewable power sources like solar and wind. It is estimated to reduce Ontario's greenhouse gas emissions by 1.2 - 4.1 million tonnes, about the equivalent of removing 40,000 gas cars from the roads.
Oneida Energy Stoage LP is also a groundbreaking partnership with the local Indigenous commmunities, being a joint partnership between Six Nations of the Grand River Development Corporation, Mississaugas of the New Credit Business Corporation, NRStor Inc, Aecon Concessions, and Northland Power Inc. While not actually located within the Six Nations of the Grand River reserve, it is very close to its boundaries, and Oneida's workforce is primarily Indigenous.
This, then, is another step towards reducing our reliance on fossil fuels, and another valuable piece of ammunition to counter the claims of naysayers who keep insisting that those renewables are never going to come to anything because the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow (yawn!)
So, you see, we can build nice things here in Canada.
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