Michael Tutton
Canoe.ca
November 6, 2005

He’s taking advantage of a trend among Canadian utilities to allow larger farms and small businesses to sell renewable energy to the power grids – a practice known as net metering.

In McCormick’s case, when the wind blows off the Bay of Fundy and spins the blades of two wind turbines at his home in Rodney, N.S., power utility Emera Inc. records every kilowatt produced and credits his account.

"The beautiful thing about the system is that the power that’s exported to the lines is given to us at the full rate," the 30-year-old renewable energy enthusiast said in an interview.

In the past, he had to set up an expensive battery system to store power, and he often found that he had to "throw power away" during periods of powerful wind storms. Oil price shocks in the last few months, coupled with a need for utilities to seek energy forms other than fossil fuels, has boosted interest among the utilities in Nova Scotia, Ontario, British Columbia and elsewhere.

In Nova Scotia, NS Power has set a goal of producing 10 megawatts from customers who sell back their renewable energy – enough to power a town of about 2,600 homes.

In the past it only allowed customers – mostly homeowners or small farms – with 10 kilowatt units to sell to the system. As of this week, it’s allowing small businesses and farms with generation capacity 10 times as large onto the program.

In Ontario, the province’s power generator is seeking alternative sources of electricity generation – from natural gas to biomass, to wind power – as the Liberal government moves ahead with plans to phase out coal-fired plants.

Meanwhile, the Ontario government enacted regulations last week that permit utilities to buy renewable energy from customers with generation capacity of up to 500 kilowatts, units used by large farms, government buildings or small businesses.

While there are ambitious goals, there isn’t likely to be a stampede of customers offering to juice up the system.

Robert Johnson, the manager of renewable energy development at Nova Scotia Power, says the trend will be limited by economics.

In most cases, the cost of producing renewable energy is higher than buying from the utility, he said.

"Pricing or the cost of installing these systems is a major hurdle. It comes down to the fact that the folks have to have a wind resource that produce the kilowatt hours that will support it," he said.

In British Columbia, after a year of offering a net metering program, there are only eight customers with photovoltaic cells and two small hydro facilities on board, with six additional customers in the midst of signing up.

Tom Adams, executive director of Energy Probe, an energy think tank in Toronto, dismisses the announcements by Nova Scotia Power and the Ontario government as little more than a public relations exercise.

He notes the hook-up costs are often prohibitive, and small-scale renewable energy is simply too expensive.

Each producer also has to install units that will block the power from flowing onto the lines if there is a power outage.

"This is feel good stuff. It’s a way of responding to critics who are advocates for renewable energy . . . It’s really not practical," he said.

Adams said that at one time he held out hope that there would be widespread use of small fuel cells, powered by natural gas or hydrogen, in hundreds of thousands of backyards and basements.

Today, he’s said he’s come to doubt it’s likely after a decade of awaiting cost-effective units.

Wind power still works better at a larger scale, he argues.

"It’s a highly technical field. You need well-trained technicians to care for these machines. The efficient way of delivering wind power to the grid isn’t through hokey-pokey backyard device it’s through a commercial wind farm."

Still, McCormick said for some customers, the payback isn’t purely short-term economics.

He’s currently covering about one-third of his energy costs with his wind turbine system, which cost about $15,000 to set up.

He said he gains immediate satisfaction from reducing his fossil fuel consumption and "a feeling of independence."

"The next five to 10 years this is going to increase. We’re seeing our power rates increase. As they go up, the payback gets better and better."