Ontario is staring down an electricity supply crunch and amid a rush to secure more power, it is plunging into the world of energy storage - a relatively unknown solution for the grid that experts say could also change energy use at home.
Beyond the sprawling nuclear plants and waterfalls that generate most of the province's electricity sit the batteries, the underground caverns storing compressed air to generate electricity, and the spinning flywheels waiting to store energy at times of low demand and inject it back into the system when needed.
Energy Minister Todd Smith has directed the IESO to secure 1,500 megawatts of new natural gas capacity between 2025 and 2027, along with 2,500 megawatts of clean technology such as energy storage, which together would be enough to power the city of Toronto.Smith said in an interview that it's the largest active procurement for energy storage in North America.
Justin Rangooni, the executive director of Energy Storage Canada, said because of the relatively tight timelines, the 2,500 megawatts is likely to be mostly lithium batteries. But there are many other ways to store energy, other than a simple battery. Flywheels are large spinning tops that can store kinetic energy, which can be used to power a turbine and produce electricity. A flywheel facility in Minto, Ont., also installed solar panels on its roof and became the first solar storage hybrid facility in Ontario, said a top IESO official.
The small amount of storage already in the system provides more fine tuning of the electricity system, whereas 2,500 megawatts will be a more “foundational” part of the toolkit, said Sparkes. “If we can enable those batteries to work together in aggregation, or work with other types of technologies like solar or smart building systems in a configuration, like a group of technologies, that becomes a virtual power plant,” Sparkes said.
“As you had refrigeration, you could store your commodity and that changed the distribution channels of it. So I believe that energy storage is going to radically change the distribution channels of energy.”
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Ontario plunging into energy storage as electricity supply crunch loomsOntario is staring down an electricity supply crunch and amid a rush to secure more power, it is plunging into the world of energy storage — a relatively unknown solution for the grid that experts say could also change energy use at home.
Read more »