A vast new energy storage system – thought to be the largest of its kind in Canada to date with 48MW / 144MWh capacity, will be built in the city of Sault Ste Marie, Ontario.
Fluence, the venture jointly owned by developer AES Corporation and Siemens, will provide energy storage technology and provide engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) services. The company has signed an agreement for the project with PUC Services, an affiliate of the city’s designated Local Distribution Company (LDC) for electricity, PUC Distribution.
The Fluence-PUC partnership will be used to offer energy management solutions to PUC’s biggest customers. Through use of the battery, businesses with a large energy profile should be able to save money on their monthly energy costs.
As often reported by this site, Ontario pays for grid upgrades and decarbonisation partly through the Global Adjustment Charge, a peak demand pricing mechanism which levies higher rates on commercial customers than residential. This has led to numerous C&I projects that have been used to ‘peak shave’ businesses’ energy demand from the grid in the province, but nothing on the scale of this latest project announcement to date.
Customer Energy Management programme to be paid for through shared savings
Local news outlet The Sault Star carried a report about the project late last week. A Fluence spokesman said today that broadly, the report was correct but did mistakenly state that the capacity was expected to be 45MW / 165MWh, which the Fluence representative corrected. The report also put some numbers on potential savings businesses could make. Some 357 business customers could save a total of CA$3 million (US$2.29 million) to CA$5 million savings annually between them, amounting to around CA$100 million over the course of the project’s lifetime.
Recent Comments