Sault Ste. Marie Battery System, Canada’s Largest, to Save Local Businesses $3 Million Per Year
Ysc usc/Wikimedia CommonsSault Ste. Marie, Ontario is about to become the home of Canada’s biggest battery storage system, a 48-megawatt/144-megawatt-hour system to be supplied by Fluence, a joint venture of AES Corporation and German industrial giant Siemens.
The partnership between Fluence and PUC Services, an affiliate of Sault Ste. Marie’s local electricity distribution company, “will be used to offer energy management solutions to PUC’s biggest customers,” Energy Storage News reports. “Through use of the battery, businesses with a large energy profile should be able to save money on their monthly energy costs.”
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The project was driven in part by Ontario’s Global Adjustment Charge, a “peak demand pricing mechanism which levies higher rates on commercial customers than residential,” the publication states. “This has led to numerous [commercial and industrial] 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.”
Fluence and PUC Services expect the new installation to save more than 350 business customers between C$3 and $5 million per year, or about $100 million over the life of the project.