A power company plans to build what would be Canada’s largest energy storage facility in Owen Sound.
Saturn Power Inc. held a public meeting at the Harry Lumley Bayshore Community Centre last night, fielding questions from a small gathering about the planned Owen Sound Regulation Services Project.
The project would see $10-million of lithium-ion batteries arranged in rows and housed in a warehouse to provide regulation services support to Ontario’s grid system.
The site chosen for development is 248 9th Ave East, which has an existing warehouse and loading docks.
The lot and warehouse is owned by Doug Coleman Trucking, which ceased operations and laid off 42 people in Owen Sound in August after 32 years in business.
A Saturn Power spokesperson says the company has an agreement with first option to buy the lot if all approvals are granted and it moves ahead with the battery energy storage facility construction.
Julia Kossowski, Saturn Power Director of Project Development, says they are still in the very early stages of project planning.
“We’ll be approaching the City of Owen Sound in the near future to start discussing the approvals process to ensure that their concerns are satisfied,” she says.
Kossowski says the expectation is to start detailed engineering by December 2017 and be ready to start construction in May 2018.
The target date to have the facility operational is November 2018.
Kossowski says Owen Sound was chosen in the site selection process because of a numbers of factors. First, the availability of grid capacity in the area. Secondly, a skilled and knowledgeable workforce for construction activities and long-term operations.
Other factors include its proximity to the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station as well as existing renewable energy projects and proposed renewable energy projects, which results in grid conditions which will benefit from the project.
The industrial land is also nearby to a Hydro One substation that Kossowski says will benefit from this project.
The facility isn’t expected to create a large number of permanent jobs. Kossowski says battery energy storage facilities can run fairly efficiently on their own.
She says, however, there will be ongoing scheduled and unscheduled maintenance and Saturn Power expects to hire a small local team to manage the facility from a maintenance perspective.
The facility is being developed in response to a request by the Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) for regulation services.
It will store power from the grid on batteries and can instantaneously supply power to the grid when needed.
Kossowski says regulation services support is required to ensure the reliability of Ontario’s grid system.
It helps to correct variations in power system frequency and corrects for short-term changes in electricity use which might affect the stability of the power grid.
The batteries can absorb and discharge power to the grid when IESO decides regulation service is required.
Saturn Power is currently in the process of building a similar facility in Stratford, Ont.
Stratford’s facility will have a storage capacity of 8.8 megawatts (MW) and 40.8 megawatt hours (MWh) of available energy.
That ranks as Canada’s largest in terms of capacity, but the Owen Sound facility surpass it, with more than triple the available energy. It will be able to discharge 50 MW per hour for three hours, a total capacity of 150 MWh.
