Last year’s sweltering summer strained the power grid as Ontarians struggled to keep cool.

But the province had a powerful ace up its sleeve.

Stored inside 278 giant lithium-ion batteries — each the size of a tractor-trailer — in rural Haldimand County was enough energy to instantly power tens of thousands of homes when temperature spiked and electricity demand surged.

“Some of those really hot days we had this past summer, Oneida was key to keeping the lights on,” said Scott Matthews, vice-president of projects with energy storage developer NRStor Inc., a partner in the Oneida Energy Storage Project along with majority owner Northland Power, Aecon, Six Nations of the Grand River Development Corporation and the Mississaugas of the Credit Business Corporation.

The 10-acre, $700-million battery farm near Jarvis, Ont., is the largest operation of its kind in Canada, able to return 250 megawatts of electricity to the grid each hour for four hours.

And while gas plants are slow to come online, power from batteries can flow at the press of a button. “This is just immediately available, any time,” Matthews told The Hamilton Spectator.

Having that flexibility helps, said a spokesperson for Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator, which manages the province’s power grid.

“The province faced the highest peak electricity demand since 2013 during this summer’s heat waves, and Oneida helped meet this demand by providing over 1,000 megawatt hours of energy,” spokesperson Michael Dodsworth told The Spectator.

Noting Oneida was the first large-scale battery storage facility to connect directly to Ontario’s power grid, Dodsworth said the project “represents a major step forward in making our grid more flexible and resilient at lowest cost.”

With nuclear reactors having to run all night as demand dips, Ontario is sometimes forced to pay cross-border consumers to absorb excess power from the grid. Storing that energy for later use at peak times makes more sense than giving it away, Matthews said.

And since Oneida also stores energy produced at off-peak hours by renewable sources like wind and solar, it is a cleaner power source than emission-heavy gas plants, he added.

That success has helped pave the way for new battery projects — including three more applications currently under review for Norfolk County.

Trio of projects pitched for Norfolk County in southern Ontario

When it came online last May, Oneida more than doubled the province’s energy storage capacity. With electricity usage projected to skyrocket in the coming decades, Queen’s Park wants to expand capacity in a hurry, and three Norfolk-area projects are under review by Ontario’s electricity system operator.

Skyline Clean Energy, a newcomer on the energy storage scene, wants to install 65 lithium-ion phosphate batteries the size of shipping containers on two acres of a solar farm the company owns outside Simcoe, Ont. The humming sound produced by dozens of batteries feeding 30 megawatts of power to Hydro One’s distribution grid would be no louder than a library, Skyline’s director of asset management, Matt Kennedy, told Norfolk councillors at a presentation in November. Noting this battery farm would fall within Simcoe’s wellhead protection area, Coun. Doug Brunton raised concerns about contaminants leaking into the town’s water supply should the batteries catch fire. Kennedy promised prompt soil testing and remediation should that happen.Norfolk Resilient Generation Inc. is looking to produce up to 15 megawatts by burning natural gas in five reciprocating engines installed in shipping containers on a livestock farm outside Simcoe. The power would be stored on-site until needed on the grid, while heat from the engines would warm a hog nursery barn on the farm.

NRStor, after being turned down by the system operator for a 2023 project proposal in Simcoe, pitched a larger project last November that would store 150 megawatts on 20 acres of industrial land in the municipality. The Simcoe Battery Project would provide 1,200 megawatt hours to the Hydro One grid over an eight-hour period. The same Indigenous organizations that partnered with NRStor for the Oneida project would have a financial stake in this venture.

Norfolk’s economic development department says “energy storage technology represents a strategic infrastructure investment that supports energy reliability.” But some councillors have expressed concerns about noise and the risk of the lithium-ion batteries catching fire.

At a council meeting last year, members heard each temperature-controlled battery unit comes with a built-in fire suppression system, and the companies would pay for additional training for Norfolk’s volunteer fire department.

Large-scale battery storage facilities pose a different risk than smaller lithium-ion batteries found in scooters, e-bikes and the like, Deputy Fire Chief James Robertson told The Spectator in an email.

“Those types of installations are highly regulated and typically include built-in fire suppression and safety systems,” he said. “This is quite different from smaller hobby-related batteries.”

All three applicants have secured the municipality’s endorsement, which is required by the system operator. Each company offered Norfolk a sweetener in the form of annual financial contributions to the county’s coffers.

Norfolk wants to get $1,500 per kilowatt hour per year from any successful bidder, which would make Skyline’s contribution to the municipality around $900,000 over the 20-year life of the project, while NRStor’s larger facility could generate $225,000 annually for the municipality.

The system operator is expected to issue project approvals by the middle of June. The earliest any of the proposed facilities would connect to the grid is 2028.

Oneida ‘proved the hypothesis’

NRStor’s director of project development, Fariha Husain, told The Spectator none of this momentum would be happening had Oneida not proved it is possible — and profitable — to store power.

“The Oneida project basically opened the door to all these procurements,” she said.

The project is already exceeding NRStor’s revenue projections, Matthews added, which means money is flowing into Six Nations and Mississaugas of the Credit to fund schools and other local projects.

“You’re actually seeing those benefits roll into the community, which is amazing,” he said.

In a statement to The Spectator, Energy Minister Stephen Lecce also praised the inclusion of the Six Nations of the Grand River Development Corporation and the Mississaugas of the Credit Business Corporation as partners in Oneida, which he noted came in “ahead of schedule and under budget.”

“Collaboration between government, Indigenous partners and the private sector is the model that will further propel our economy forward with one of the cleanest electricity grids in the world,” Lecce said.

Oneida will not be the largest battery storage facility in Canada for long. A 411-megawatt project south of Ottawa in Edwardsburgh Cardinal is expected to come online next year, while Quebec-based energy company Boralex is building a 300-megawatt facility near Hagersville in Haldimand.

The Hagersville project has faced some opposition from residents, but Haldimand council has embraced the idea of battery storage, authorizing municipal staff to automatically issue letters of support to proponents who meet county-established criteria.

A 211-megawatt battery farm northeast of Jarvis is also under review in Haldimand, with three smaller projects in the public engagement stage.

Ontario is expanding the power grid even as Prime Minister Mark Carney suspended a Trudeau-era mandate last September that would have required 20 per cent of new vehicles sold in Canada to be zero-emission.

But Matthews said a slowdown in the sale of electric vehicles will not lessen Ontario’s “staggering” need for power.

Husain agreed, predicting the “electrification” of home heating systems such as heat pumps will continue to drive demand for low-cost electricity produced from renewable resources.

“We think electrification is key to meeting our climate goals, and that’s what this all stems from,” she said.

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Nearly three years after he first walked onto a Caledonia construction site and became the public face of an Indigenous land defence movement known as 1492 Land Back Lane, Skyler Williams is a free man.

Williams, who is Mohawk from Six Nations of the Grand River, had pleaded guilty to three criminal charges connected to his role in stopping the construction of a planned 218-home subdivision on McKenzie Road. The parcel was 40 acres that land defenders, backed by the traditional leadership on Six Nations, say is unceded Haudenosaunee territory.

Williams’ lawyer, Joshua Frost, sought a conditional discharge for one count of mischief and two counts of failure to comply with an undertaking, while the Crown asked Justice Gethin Edward to hand down a suspended sentence, which comes with a criminal conviction.

Instead, after hearing from several expert witnesses who put Williams’ actions in their historical and legal context, Edward granted Williams an absolute discharge, meaning he left the Cayuga courthouse with no criminal conviction and no restrictions on visiting the Land Back site.

Another land defender, Deryl Porter, also received an absolute discharge.

All other charges Williams had faced, including a count of intimidation, had been withdrawn prior to the sentencing hearing. 

Edward said he attempted to “fashion a sentence that incorporates Haudenosaunee legal traditions,” basing his ruling on the Two Row Wampum, an agreement between the Haudenosaunee and the Dutch in upstate New York in 1613 that established a nation-to-nation relationship between Indigenous people and European settlers.

“Skyler Williams was carrying out his actions as a land protector in the context of these Haudenosaunee laws,” Edward said, adding he granted an absolute discharge to avoid setting Williams up for future prosecution.

“Mr. Williams clearly expressed his view (that) any further attempts to develop contested lands would be revisited by him,” Edward said.

“Therefore, conditions would simply set him up for a breach.”

Reached by The Hamilton Spectator after the verdict, Williams said he was pleased to put his own legal situation behind him but remained frustrated at the lack of action from Ottawa and Queen’s Park to resolve the ongoing land dispute.

“At the same time that I feel relief, I also feel anger that after all of this talk about reconciliation, all of this ‘happy Indian’ rhetoric that we keep hearing from the federal and provincial governments, when it actually comes down to it, there is no interest in giving land back to Indigenous people,” Williams said.

“There is no interest in making true reparations.”

In making his decision, Edward drew on the testimony of Indigenous scholar Rick Monture of McMaster University, who guided the judge through the history of the Haldimand Tract, an area of roughly one million acres along the full length of the Grand River granted to the Haudenosaunee by the British in gratitude for their allyship during the American Revolution.

Over time, Edward said, the Haudenosaunee were “swindled” out of this land and associated money by settlers “with absolutely no appetite to give land back to Native people.”

Referring to the Caledonia site, Edward said, “This dispute stems from the absence of any documentation that proves that there was an actual surrender by the Six Nations of this tract of land.”

This interpretation differs from that proffered in civil court by lawyers for Foxgate Developments, the consortium that has since abandoned plans to build on the McKenzie Road site.

In granting injunctions to the developers, two civil court judges agreed Foxgate has legal title to the land and the police have the right to remove the land defenders, who in the court’s eyes are trespassing. But the OPP has not made any move to enforce the permanent injunction granted last December, and most land defenders and supporters have had their charges dropped.

In her expert testimony before Edward, Indigenous lawyer Beverly Jacobs said land defenders have a recognized role in Haudenosaunee law.

“You call them protesters, we call them protectors of land and territories … for our people and for the future for our children,” Jacobs said.

Land defence is needed, Williams told The Spectator, because politicians are more interested in photo-ops than addressing historical injustices.

“Posing for the picture with the politician isn’t getting us anything or anywhere,” Williams said. “Dealing with land claims in a real way needs to be that step forward toward reconciliation.”

That process can be “uncomfortable” for Canadians, Monture said, but it is essential to address the “injustice” of having the large swath of territory given to the Haudenosaunee reduced over time to the current Six Nations reserve.

The disputed Caledonia site has been under continuous occupation since July 2020, save for a few hours on Aug. 5 when the OPP moved in and arrested Williams and others.

Today the land is dotted with tiny homes, several community buildings, a community garden and a fruit tree orchard.

Six Nations members still live at 1492 Land Back Lane with no plans to leave, even as the threat of police action still hangs over the camp, Williams said.

He noted colonial governments will often say returning land to First Nations is impossible “due to the passage of time.”

“Time has passed, and our people have been on the land. We ain’t going anywhere,” he said. 

“So the passage of time says that’s our land and it’s always going to be our land.”

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