CollingwoodToday welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected] or via the website. Please include your full name, daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following letter was sent in response to the a councillor from The Blue Mountains introducing a motion to oppose the pumped storage energy project proposed by TC Energy in Meaford.
It is long past the time that TC Energy drop its inept pumped storage project.
Here's why:
The cost and timelines: the Independent Electricity System Operator has twice referred to this project as having no value to Ontario
taxpayer.
The environmental and social damages (dust, noise, trucks and infrastructure overload) that we will need to live with for likely five or six years at least.
By the time it is completed it will no longer be necessary and TC Energy’s claims of "green” and “climate-friendly” will be negated. Their “use of off-peak power” to recharge their massive lake will no longer be available with the onslaught of electric vehicles being charged every night.
TBM’s oath to protect the local waters cannot be continued if pumped storage project is allowed to proceed: it will require 1,400 megawatts-plus to produce 1,000 megawatts every day. This extra 400 megawatts will be wasted as friction and heat which will be fed back into the air and the waters of Georgian Bay.
Battery storage technology now available is cleaner, way more efficient, way less destructive to construct and be available in just two years. It can be a digital system that a 10-year-old could operate on his laptop.
Picture four 400-megawatt battery storage systems built next to the Barrie transfer station using solar or other green technology systems to charge each system: The first is put to use and, as it runs low on energy, the second automatically takes over (similar to home generators). And so on operating at 90 per cent efficiency with no effect on Georgian Bay waters and watershed.
Pat Maloney
Meaford, Ont.
