Battery energy storage is the most affordable, lowest-emission path to meeting Ontario’s growing electricity demand and delivering a reliable power supply in rural Ottawa, and it can get the job done with a laser focus on safety, concludes a new analysis by Dunsky Energy + Climate released Thursday.
Battery energy storage systems (BESS) win big on community, costs, and climate, concludes the study commissioned by Evolugen, a Gatineau, Quebec-based unit of Brookfield Renewables that is seeking to build a 250-megawatt BESS facility in the rural community of South March, in Ottawa’s west end.
While the BESS project is to be sited in South March, city councillor Cathy Curry also stressed the technology’s central importance to industrial users in the Kanata North Tech Park, where the report launch took place.
“Something that has been an ongoing theme for the last three years has been energy in the park,” Curry said. “We have a cluster of 540 companies here that want to be near each other,” and “anywhere there is energy is where they want to be.”
She added that tech companies like Ericsson and Nokia, guided by regulations in Sweden and Finland, respectively, are increasingly looking for clean power. “We have to follow those other rules, as well, so we need more green, renewable energy.”
And with tech park companies engaged in a massive amount of research, development, and testing, “they need redundant energy. They can’t have projects going on and then their energy glitches out. That will destroy sometimes years of research, so there has to be seamless, redundant energy in the park.”
Resilience and Safety
But the main focus of the Dunsky report was on the role of BES systems in making energy-dependent communities more resilient and safe. “Outages of more than a few hours pose a risk to public safety, communication, water supply, fuel supply, transportation, refrigeration, food distribution, and medical services,” said Senior Consultant Janice Ashworth.
Energy resilience must be top of mind for Ottawa, the study added, with grid-damaging wind and ice storms “expected to increase in the region,” 40% of grid infrastructure due to be replaced within the decade, and the local population expected to grow by at least 40% by 2050.
To meet that challenge, BESS steps up fast when it is available: “Batteries have ultra-rapid responses to [grid] disruptions and can add or subtract power from the grid within milliseconds to keep the grid stable,” Roger Dargaville, director of Australia’s Monash Energy Institute, told Dunsky.
BESS can also be built at speed: a 9-MW battery system was installed in Stratford, Ontario, in four months, and the systems are also eminently scalable.
Dollars Saved, Emissions Reduced
The reliability of BESS also means money saved. “Every kilowatt-hour of electricity NOT delivered (during an outage) has an approximate cost to the economy of $12 to $50 per kilowatt-hour,” the report states.
And lower electricity system costs mean lower electricity bills for ratepayers. When Ontario completed a major electricity procurement last year, battery systems won big on cost, supplying 1,784 megawatts of capacity compared to just 411 MW for gas.
The increase in local storage capacity reduces the need for costly, new transmission and distribution infrastructure. And batteries stand to shield Ontario ratepayers from the impact of carbon pricing on gas generation—and utilities from costly curtailments.
Buying into BESS also means the province will need fewer gas plants to meet peak electricity demand. The province’s Independent Electricity System Operator expects demand to grow 75% by 2050, and “significant resource buildout is needed,” Dunsky warns (though the IESO calculation predates this week’s disruptive news of China’s DeepSeek artificial intelligence model). “Each 2,500 MW of BESS installed will save 260 kilotonnes of carbon dioxide per year, the equivalent to taking 60,000 gas cars off the road,” the consultancy says.
Polling by local distribution company Hydro Ottawa indicates customers want climate action and support the investments that will drive such action forward.
Safety Built In
Consistent with industry standards, Evolugen’s proposed BESS facility in South March will feature lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries, not the nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) units that have been “linked to most battery fires,” Dunsky writes.
The system will be built to the UL 9540A standard to prevent thermal runaway and ensure safe site design, with 24/7 site monitoring with advanced sensors. Evolugen is working closely with Ottawa Fire Services, and close collaboration with emergency response teams is also standard.
During the report launch, Geoff Wright, Evolugen’s senior vice president and head of development, stressed that the company takes safety seriously, drawing on expertise from across Brookfield’s global network to ensure that projects reflect the latest experience and lessons learned in an industry where safety keeps improving while system costs continue to fall.
“We take our role very seriously,” he told participants. “These projects don’t get built unless we meet all the standards and work with all the partners to make sure we’re implementing the infrastructure in a way that is responsible and safe.”
He added: “This is not just about adding some additional equipment to the electrical system. This is very much a mission-driven exercise.”
With a number of concerned citizens from South March in the audience, session moderator Angela Keller-Herzog, executive director of Community Associations for Environmental Sustainability (CAFES), asked Wright if he would commit his company to answering every question about the project that it receives from community members, within a “reasonable time frame”, and as substantively as possible. Wright agreed.
“We’re looking at multiple months of engagement here, and we welcome it,” he said. “I know that we are creating a little bit of anxiety around what the plans are, and I’m here to tell you that we want to share those plans, we want to be transparent, and we want your feedback.”
The Dunsky report landed as the City of Ottawa’s Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee (ARAC) approved zoning amendments to established land use policy for BESS siting in Ottawa. Ottawa residents are divided on BESS deployment, CBC News reports, and on whether the draft zoning amendments are unduly restrictive. The proposal will go to the city’s Planning and Housing Committee February 5, then on to city council February 12.
