HARRISTON ‒ Another battery storage facility is being proposed for Wellington County, this time in Minto.
Delegating to council earlier this week, Nexus, in partnership with NRStor, wants council to support their proposal to redevelop the Harriston Energy Storage Facility into a Battery Energy Storage System (BESS).
The application proposes "just over a dozen" 8x20 foot sea cans stored on "just over" 13-14,000 ft and no permanent employees.
Battery Energy Storage Systems, or BESS, are rechargeable batteries that store energy from different sources, during off-peak hours, and onto the electricity grid when needed while reducing the province's reliance on fossil-fuel generation.
"For solar development, we would typically prefer a rural environment just because it's an eyesore for a lot of folks but for storage, it's generally close to the community, especially given some of the benefits," said Nexus' CEO Keith Sandor, during the meeting. "Aside from the technology being a kind of standby infrastructure, if there is an outage, you want (a BESS) to be as close to you as possible."
According to the province's Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO), Ontario needs 4,000 MW of new electricity generation and storage resources to support a growing population and economy.
The IESO procured 1,500 MW in late 2022/early 2023 and plans to procure 2,500 MW in late 2023/ early 2024.
Built in 2014, the Harriston Energy Storage Facility was originally part of an IESO initiative to study emerging energy storage technologies and provide short-duration services to the IESO before its contract expired earlier this year.
A report with staff recommendations will come forward at the Dec. 15 meeting.
Isabel Buckmaster is the Local Journalism Initiative reporter for GuelphToday. LJI is a federally-funded program.
