Other options like wind and solar, or small modular reactors (“SMR”), are often suggested as clean energy replacements for diesel. Unfortunately, none of them are both base load and load following or can be modified to do so at an acceptable cost.
- Small modular reactors – Initially, SMRs are not approved for operation and remain in development. It is expected that most will be generally 300 MW in size, or slightly less, with recent projections that at some point in the future they might be deliverable in the 50MW range. This Community needs up to 2MW to allow for growth and much less in the summers currently. SMRs will be at least 25-50 times too big and hence too costly. Secondly, they are not expected to load follow, as they will need to generate at a constant rate, like large nuclear reactors. When generators get out of synch with load, frequency and voltage spikes occur, causing significant damage. Simply, they are not fit for purpose for this Community.
- Wind – Wind is another option regularly discussed as a clean energy option. It is not acceptable either. That is because it is intermittent and generates only when the wind blows. If there is no wind, there is no generation, and in an island system, there is no electricity. The solution that is usually proposed is to add storage through utility size batteries. The challenge is to know how much battery storage is required and how long it needs to last. If there is no material wind for a month, then a month’s worth of load demand is needed in battery storage. A month of load demand at ABLFN today is approximately 250 MWh, depending on the time of year. At a cost of $600,000/MWh of storage, a month of storage capacity would cost $150M. To get that much energy into storage, the wind installation would have to be about 20 MWs, with a capacity factor of 30%. That is a further $40M, for a total of $190M assuming the design strategy was to have 30 days of storage in batteries. And further, if the wind does not blow for 32 days, hypothetically speaking, or blows too slowly, then the community would be dark for those two days for which it did not plan battery storage.
- Solar – The same is even more true for solar. Solar generally generates energy for about 1,000 hours a year, primarily in the summer. Given there are 8,760 hours in a year, a solar generating system would need to have at least 8 times the needed installation in MW, so that 8 times 1000 equals in energy production that an otherwise normal system produces reliably for 8,760 hours. Worse, the battery storage would have to be greater, because in the winter, the angle of the sun is very low, generating little energy, particularly in northern communities like ABLFN, and that is when the panels are not covered in snow. This is also when energy demand in ABLFN is highest, as much of the heating in the Community is electric. Annual capacity factors are generally observed to be as low as 11% for solar in Northern Ontario. Multiplying the required installed capacity and battery storage to provide a constructive base load supply through batteries will cost 5-7 times that of biomass. Lastly, even with the absurd cost, the installation is not without risk that the batteries run empty before new generation occurs.
MDC has therefore concluded that the only base load, load following system that can be sized for ABLFN and still meet power quality requirements, safety, and reliability standards is BIOMASS, with its low temperature, low pressure Organic Rankine Cycle power generation.
