Queen’s University Professor Warren Mabee. Photo: CONTRIBUTED

An expert on renewable energy at Queen’s University says he would need answers to a number of key questions before determining whether the proposed 500 MW gas/diesel generating plant near Centre Village makes sense.

“A lot of jurisdictions have gone to using gas plants because a gas plant can ramp up and down very quickly,” Warren Mabee, professor of geography and planning and former Canada Research Chair in Renewable Energy told Warktimes during a telephone interview last week.

“So you can get power onto the grid very fast if the wind happens to drop or if the sun goes behind the clouds and your output drops,” he said, adding that he has questions about how heavily NB Power would rely on the proposed gas/diesel plant.

“There are compelling reasons to reduce fossil fuels where possible and to utilize cleaner sources of energy. And, you know, one of the big questions about a 500 megawatt gas plant is how much of it is really going to be used as a backup,” he said.

“It sort of sounds like New Brunswick Power is planning to use this facility not only to back up the wind and solar, but really to meet growing demand.”

During a committee hearing at the New Brunswick legislature last week, Brad Coady, NB Power’s vice president of business development, said that without the PROENERGY gas plant, the province risks running out of electricity within three years.

‘Cart before the horse’

“So how much new wind and solar will be added to the grid?” Mabee asks.

He says at the moment, there aren’t enough of those renewables deployed in New Brunswick and across the Atlantic region to require a huge generator to back them up if they go offline.

“And that’s one of the questions that I would have. I think actually that’s the real pertinent question.

“To propose building the backup before the calls have been issued to build all of that wind and solar power, puts the cart before the horse,” Mabee says.

“You’re building something because you’re anticipating other power coming on, but we don’t know when that other power will come into the grid,” he adds.

“If this is going to be a backup facility for other types of energy, I’d like to know more about the other types of energy because then I’d know better whether this plant makes sense.

“Right now it seems pretty large and it seems like it’s going to be taking on more of a primary role rather than a backup role.”

Other options

Mabee said NB Power could be exploring other options.

He says, for example, Germany burns biogas to back up renewable sources.

“They run their grid almost like a series of smaller grids, where they’ve done a really good job of figuring out how to balance loads on a regional basis mostly with biogas that can be matched against wind and solar,” he says.

“In the case of New Brunswick or Nova Scotia, most of the biogas would probably come from livestock farms. You collect the manure, put it into a biogas digester, and then collect the gas and burn it to run a turbine,” he adds.

“It’s off-the-shelf technology.”

Mabee says that instead of a single, 500 MW generating plant, NB Power could rely on smaller, local biogas facilities.

“And again, if you look at the German example, that’s really the way that they’ve gone.”

‘Science fiction’

Warren Mabee. Photo: Queen’s University

Mabee says electrical generating and storage technologies are moving very rapidly and in 10 years, NB Power may regret locking itself into an expensive, 25-year contract.

“Ten years ago if you had asked me if there was a potential that we could harness the battery storage capacity of an automobile fleet to store power overnight or deliver it during the day, I would have said, ‘No, there’s absolutely no way that will ever happen.'”

Yet, he says Ford’s lightning truck already does it and the technology is rapidly advancing in China.

“The way that people use their cars is often very predictable,” he says.

“You get up in the morning, you go out, you start your car, you drive to work, or you drive to the stores or whatever, you park for a while, and then you come out.

“Now, what’s needed if you want to use that storage capacity are essentially charging stations that operate in two directions all over the place, in parking lots, at malls, at offices, at homes.”

Mabee acknowledges that technology is not available yet and there are many engineering problems left to solve.

“It sounds a bit like science fiction, and it sounds maybe a little bit like I’m reaching, but the point here is that in 10 years, the technological solutions available may look very different than what’s available right now.

“And committing to building a very large backup generating station at this point may not make as much sense a decade out as it may seem to make on paper right now,” he says.