Toby Couture testifying today in an online hookup

New Brunswick’s Energy & Utilities Board heard expert testimony today on battery energy storage systems (BESS) from Toby Couture, a graduate of Mount Allison University who went on to earn advanced degrees from the Université de Moncton and the London School of Economics.

Couture, who now runs his energy consulting firm E3 Analytics based in Berlin, Germany, said he’s been working in the energy sector for about 20 years advising governments, power system operators and other clients on all five continents.

“I think it’s quite clear that the power system and the energy system as a whole is undergoing quite rapid and profound transformation,” Couture told NB Power lawyer John Furey who spent more than an hour attempting to have him disqualified as an expert witness.

Among other things, Furey noted that Couture co-wrote a paper in 2007 for the Conservation Council of New Brunswick on energy self-sufficiency and was appearing today as an expert witness for the CCNB making him more of an advocate than an expert.

“You continue to believe that it’s important to transform the way that we use and produce energy?” Furey asked.

NB Power lawyer John Furey

“I think for anyone who works in the power sector, the only constant is change,” Couture replied.

“We’ve seen that going back to the emergence of early stage hydro power, the emergence of coal and thermal power plants, nuclear in the 1950s and 60s to gas turbines in the late 80s and early 90s to today,” he said.

After the EUB rejected Furey’s arguments and accepted him as an expert witness, Couture went on to argue that grid-scale batteries combined with renewable sources such as wind and solar could provide electricity more cheaply than the proposed 500 MW gas/diesel plant in Tantramar which would cost at least $3.5 billion over 25-years.

Couture also rejected arguments that batteries wouldn’t be able to provide enough power to prevent blackouts during winter cold snaps pointing to large-scale battery installations in the UK, China and California.

To read Couture’s written evidence, click here.

NB Power experts

Earlier in the day, the EUB heard testimony from Bruce Tsuchida and Jill Moraski, two members of the Brattle Group, a big American consulting firm that NB Power hired to assess the proposed gas/diesel generating plant.

Brattle Group Energy Associate Jill Morawski

While Tsuchida testified that battery energy storage could be seen as an alternative, he added that to the best of his knowledge, it would not be as reliable as combustion turbines.

Moraski testified that the consultants found the gas plant to be a prudent investment because of NB Power’s projections forecasting the need for additional electricity, the tight supply from neighbours including Hydro Quebec, the emergence of data centres, projected increases in the number of electric vehicles and population growth in New Brunswick.

“One primary reason was a pretty rapid growth in the customer base. I don’t know if unprecedented is the word, but certainly unexpected,” she said.

Tsuchida and Moraski acknowledged that they based many of their conclusions on figures and forecasting assumptions supplied by NB Power.

To read the Brattle Group report, click here.