Why Ontario's big energy move is a turn away from gas plants

[k.a.c...@sympatico.ca]

Interesting data point (local to me, as I live in Ontario):

https://www.thestar.com/news/ontario/why-ontarios-big-move-to-battery-storage-has-observers-saying-gas-plants-arent-competitive-anymore/article_4695825b-bd18-40e3-9b06-17e24ba4fa76.html

[Jay Lewis]

Dropping an article link in Perplexity saves time and skips the advertising and distracting headlines to get at the meat much faster:

"Ontario’s latest battery-storage procurement appears to have outcompeted gas on price, with batteries winning contracts while no gas plants were selected in that round. The article’s core point is that battery costs have fallen fast enough that gas is losing competitiveness in Ontario’s capacity auctions.[facebook]

What changed

The reported auction result was 640 MW of battery storage at an average price of about $563.48 per MW-business day. The same coverage says that figure is roughly half the 2023 level, when battery contract prices were over $1,100 per MW-business day. Environmental Defence argues this shows batteries can now beat gas in a level competition.[environmentaldefence]

Why it matters

Ontario has already contracted about 3,000 MW of batteries and 1,000 MW of natural gas to meet peak demand by 2030. That mix suggests the grid is still adding some gas, but the latest procurement signals a stronger shift toward storage for reliability. For a business or industrial user, the practical implication is that storage is becoming a more economically viable tool for peak management and grid flexibility.[globalnews]

Related context

Earlier reporting showed Ontario had been planning both gas additions and clean capacity, including storage, to address supply constraints. That earlier tension is still relevant because grid operators often value dispatchable capacity, not just zero-emission technology. The latest auction suggests batteries are increasingly able to meet that need at lower cost.[cbc]

If you want, I can turn this into a 5-bullet executive summary or a “what this means for U.S. grid/storage markets” note."

Perplexity is my favorite because its links tend to be the most relevant and least likely to be hallucinated fake links.  It uses the other models, so isn't as biased as Gemini, GPT, and Cowork, which have alterior motives.  Perplexity probably will eventually just as google did but for now they are trying to survive by being better.

Jay

[k.a.c...@sympatico.ca]

Keith;

Oops, sorry, I forgot that the Star is behind a paywall these days. A pdf of
the article is attached. Whatever info is in there, is all I currently know
about Ontario Power Generation's battery-storage plans.

- Kieran

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Keith Lofstrom <kei...@keithl.com>
> Sent: Monday, June 15, 2026 1:28 AM
> To: k.a.c...@sympatico.ca
> Subject: Re: Why Ontario's big energy move is a turn away from gas
> plants

>
> On Sun, Jun 14, 2026 at 01:27:04PM -0400, k.a.carroll via Power
> Satellite Economics wrote:
> > Interesting data point (local to me, as I live in Ontario):
> >
> > https://www.thestar.com/news/ontario/why-ontarios-big-move-to-batter
> > y-storage-has-observers-saying-gas-plants-arent-competitive-anymore/

> > article_4695825bbd18-40e3-9b06-17e24ba4fa76.html
>
> Is there an actual article with a few paragraphs of descriptive text?
> Not being a Star subscriber, all I saw was a photo, a caption, and one
> sentence.
>
> I found this:
>
> https://www.aturapower.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/2025-05-
> 13_PDM_Nanticoke-BESS-Notice_AODA.pdf
>
> "up to" 300MW, "up to" 8 hours, perhaps a lot less than 2.4 GWh ...
> i.e. 300MW for an hour, 37MW for 8 hours.
>
> What is the battery chemistry? What is the lifetime of the batteries?
> Do they require heating in winter and cooling in summer? I hope you
> can find a better description somewhere.
>
> ----
> Keith Lofstrom kei...@keithl.com