Provincial utility Nova Scotia Power and the Mi’kmaw-owned Wskijnu’k Mtmo’taqnuow Agency (WMA) have received regulatory approval to invest C$354-million in three 50-megawatt battery storage plants in the communities of Bridgewater, Waverley, and White Rock.
The projects will each offer four hours of storage with lithium-ion batteries, and they’re scheduled to go into service by 2026, CBC reports. The Nova Scotia Utility and Review Board approved the project earlier this month.
The sites “were chosen for their proximity to existing Nova Scotia Power substations, which will convert and transmit the stored electricity,” PVBuzz Media writes.
It’s the largest energy storage project in Atlantic Canada, expected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 98,000 tonnes per year, said the Canadian Infrastructure Bank, which is contributing $116 million to the effort. It’s also the 13-member WMA’s first equity investment with Nova Scotia Power (NSP), and the CIB’s first equity loan under its $1-billion Indigenous Equity Initiative.
“This investment in battery storage is a significant step towards true economic reconciliation and developing a more sustainable future for all Mi’kma’ki,” WMA President Crystal Nicholas said in February, when the project was first announced.
At the time, PVBuzz said the CIB and Natural Resources Canada would cover $249.2 million of the project cost. Last week’s news coverage made no mention of NRCan funds and placed the federal contribution at $116 million, with ratepayers covering the remaining $237 million.
In the first three months of this year, Nova Scotia received 43% of its electricity from renewable sources, CBC writes, primarily from the Muskrat Falls hydropower plant in Newfoundland and Labrador. The rest came from fossil fuels, primarily coal—which the province is on a tight deadline to phase out by 2030.
In its regulatory application for the battery plants earlier this year, NSP said utility-scale battery storage “is poised to play a key role in Nova Scotia’s energy transition,” CBC reports.
“It said that as more renewable energy is added to the grid, batteries will provide stability by storing energy when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining, and then dispatching that energy at times of peak demand,” the national broadcaster adds.
