A private US spacecraft headed to the moon captures a glorious view of Earth

Technology respecting electricity generation, storage and grid management is rapidly advancing and displacing gas-fired peaker plants. New battery storage systems are more efficient and less costly, smooth grid flow and are non-polluting. Texas, California and Australia are replacing gas turbine peaker plants with more effective storage batteries.

Solar and wind energy generation combined with battery storage at both the grid and home/business level is the most efficient way to meet peak demand. Building expensive, outdated, polluting American gas turbines, as Manitoba Hydro is proposing, is not in Manitoba’s interest.

Premier Wab Kinew noted that a final decision to build a new turbine power plant in Brandon has not been made. I hope he’s correct, for if Manitoba Hydro already made the decision and entered binding financial obligations with GE Vernova, the PUB’s role was superfluous.

In 2025/26 Nova Scotia Power installed 3 x 50 MW Lithium-ion grid batteries with the storage capacity of over 600 MWh. Installed by Kitchener/Waterloo based Canadian Solar’s subsidiary e-Storage who have operations around the world, they accomplished this in less than two years from the approval date in June 2024. Two were operational within 18 months, the third in 24. The cost was $237 million. At Nova Scotia’s cost per MW, a 750 MW battery peaker facility would cost Hydro $1.185 billion, just 40 per cent of the proposed $3 billion gas peaker plant.