Tantramar Councillor Allison Butcher questioning NB Power VP Brad Coady

NB Power Vice President Brad Coady says the proposed 500 MW gas/diesel plant on the Chignecto Isthmus would serve many functions.

“I describe it as the Swiss Army knife that our system doesn’t have today,” Coady said in response to a question from Councillor Allison Butcher, who asked whether the project could be described as a “peaker plant” designed to switch on and off rapidly to meet surges in demand.

“Yes, I think some people could use the label of peaker plant,” Coady replied, adding, however, that the facility’s main function would be to stabilize the grid. He explained that its generators would operate about 85 per cent of the time without burning fuel, spinning in sync with the grid to provide stability as more wind and solar power are added to the system.

“The peaker plants I’ve been reading about, there’s a lot of issues with them,” Butcher said, referring to public health and environmental concerns highlighted in American studies that conclude such plants are harmful to local communities because of the high levels of pollution they emit.

Old school & new

Butcher went on to ask why John MacIsaac, Canadian president of PROENERGY, the company that plans to build the gas plant, has described it as technology that would bring “old school stability” to the power grid.

Coady replied that the gas plant would help NB Power integrate more renewable sources in its transition to “net zero” carbon emissions by 2035.

“We’re trying to figure out how do we get out of the old school and into the new school,” he said, “but we keep running into technical challenges that we haven’t figured out quite yet.”

Councillor Josh Goguen

Coady used the Swiss Army knife comparison again in responding to a question from Councillor Josh Goguen who asked why NB Power is rejecting grid-scale energy storage batteries for use during periods of peak demand.

“Have you guys looked into something like this instead of putting a 400 megawatt power plant in?” Goguen asked.

“We do face these questions every day.” Coady said. “Why not a battery?”

He added that he takes to heart Green MLA Megan Mitton’s comment that in rejecting batteries, NB Power is thinking like a dinosaur.

Coady went on to suggest that wind turbines in New Brunswick produce only 40% or less of their full or nameplate capacity for nine months of every year so there isn’t a reliable enough supply of wind energy for batteries to store and besides, batteries may supply power for four hours, but what happens if you need it for six or 10 hours or even three days?

“The Swiss Army knife that I referred to,” he said, “allows us to cover off all those things.”

In the meantime, he said, NB Power began putting out requests for grid-scale batteries in 2023 and is continuing to do so, but must justify the costs to the Energy & Utilities Board.

‘Game changer’

Coady used his Swiss Army knife reference a third time after Councillor Goguen asked why NB Power wants to put all 10 generating units in one spot instead of distributing them around the province.

NB Power VP Brad Coady

“If we were to do a small amount of generation all around the province, that is a technically viable solution,” Coady said, adding that NB Power had considered it, but knew there would be disadvantages.

“We don’t have the same benefits of natural gas being available throughout the province,” he said. “We’d have to run it on light oil or diesel fuel, which has got more emissions than natural gas.”

Coady also argued that putting the generators together would cost less than building 10 separate plants.

He pointed to another advantage that the gas plant would have. He said the relatively small 50 MW generators could be fired up individually as needed unlike larger, 350 MW generating units that must be turned on all at once.

“If we only need 50 MW, we can get only 50 MW from this facility without having to start the other seven or eight units,” he said.

“That’s an incredible game changer for our system today,” he added. “That’s the Swiss Army knife that I’m talking about.”

Water issues

Councillor Bruce Phinney asked about the water that farmers in the Centre Village area need for their animals. The plant is projected to extract up to seven million litres of groundwater per day.

“What are you willing to do for all the farmers affected, if, when they run out of water or water is contaminated?” he asked.

NB Power senior environmental technician Matt Gorman

Coady replied that PROENERGY is conducting well drilling and water testing to determine how much groundwater there is in the area and will have to show provincial regulators that there will be no adverse impact.

“I will say, there’s likely going to be an impact,” he said. “You can’t drill a well and expect to say there’s not going to be an impact.”

Later, NB Power’s senior environmental technician Matt Gorman suggested that if tests determine there is not enough water, regulators might consider requiring alternatives such as “on-site water storage and a tower” to offset demands on the aquifer.

Coady assured council that the results of the water testing will be made public likely by the end of January and certainly by the end of March.

‘Smoke screen’

Members of the public weren’t allowed to ask questions during the council meeting and will have to wait for another public meeting on January 14th.

In the meantime, Barry Rothfuss of the Coalition to Protect the Chignecto Isthmus reacted to what he heard by accusing NB Power of putting up a smoke screen to hide the noxious effects a gas peaker plant would impose on residents and the environment.

“There are literally over a thousand of these types of plants in the U.S. alone,” he said.

“Peaker plants have a huge history of pollution in underprivileged or underdeveloped communities that can’t fight back,” he added.

“Now add on all of the other environmental concerns and issues that we know about, the issue of biodiversity loss, the issue of it being a major driver behind climate change, all of that was just obfuscated because of them wanting to force this project forward,” Rothfuss said.

“We are going to damage the wetlands that are critical from an environmental standpoint affecting two provinces here just for the sake of economics and to build a plant like this in the location where they can do it as quickly and dirtily as possible.”

Tantramar MLA Megan Mitton

Tantramar MLA Megan Mitton objected to Coady’s contention that grid-scale batteries would be too expensive as she pointed out that battery prices have dropped dramatically in the last few years.

“I think they’re using really outdated information, as well as an outdated way of thinking about the grid,” she said.

“They need to move to distributed energy, which basically means decentralized, means not having huge power plants,” she added.

“Instead, it’s having wind and solar all over the province along with batteries and investing in and going a lot faster on energy efficiency. At the rate they’re going with their energy efficiency, like the heat-pump program, for example, they wouldn’t get to all the eligible households ’till the 2050s at this rate,” Mitton said.

“There are a lot of alternatives to this fossil-fuel-burning gas plant.”

For reports on campaigns against U.S. peaker plants, click here and here.

For information on battery and renewable alternatives, click here and here.