John Spears
Toronto Star
March 8, 2005

Ontario has opened 18 potential hydroelectric sites for bids from companies that want to develop them, says Natural Resources Minister David Ramsay.

If developed, the sites should yield an additional 200 to 300 megawatts of total generating capacity, most of it in Northern Ontario, Ramsay said.

Ontario is desperately searching for ways to generate more power, as consumption has been rising at a rate of about 1.5 per cent a year while the province’s fleet of generators is showing its age.

The province is due to shut down about 7,500 megawatts of coal-fired generating capacity by 2007.

Another 10,000 megawatts of nuclear generating capacity will reach the end of its normal life by 2018.

On a day of peak demand, Ontario uses about 25,000 megawatts of power.

The hydro sites were winnowed from proposals invited by the province last November.

Companies that want to develop any of the sites now have 120 days to submit formal proposals to the ministry.

Paul Norris of the Ontario Waterpower Association called Ramsay’s announcement "a good first step."

He said if everything goes smoothly, the first generating facilities on the new hydro sites could be in place by 2007.

Ramsay told reporters that water "will undoubtedly continue to be Ontario’s most important source of clean, renewable energy."

Energy Minister Dwight Duncan has claimed Ontario has enough sites scattered around the province to add 3,000 to 6,000 megawatts of generating capacity to the Ontario grid.

Others are skeptical.

Tom Adams, executive director of Energy Probe, said successive provincial governments have talked about developing new hydro sites for the past 20 years.

Yet few have been built, he said, even in the late 1980s and early 1990s when Ontario Hydro was trying to entice private companies to develop hydro stations with financial incentives.

"Anything that’s worth doing has pretty well been done," Adams said.

Remaining sites are mostly small scale, and many are in remote locations that aren’t close to transmission lines, he said.

Ramsay also said that starting April 1, companies will have six months to submit proposals for wind power developments on Crown land in the province. In January, the province awarded permits to develop 355 megawatts of wind generation.

"There could be as much as 3,000 megawatts of wind power capacity on private and Crown land across Ontario," Ramsay said.

The province currently has only 10 operating turbines, generating a total of 14.6 megawatts of power.

On selected sites, applicants will be allowed to set up a test turbine for a year to get detailed data on wind patterns. If the site still seems suitable, a full environmental assessment would follow.

A wind atlas recently published by the federal government shows that Ontario is generally a poor location for wind farms.

But Ramsay said the federal wind atlas has been mapped on a very broad scale, and detailed research is likely to show specific locations with good wind potential.