The province’s energy-system operator said it’s offered contracts to seven battery projects totalling 739 megawatts, including a single facility in the southwestern town of Hagersville offering 285 megawatts of power for up to four hours. Ontario has 228 megawatts of storage capacity now, mainly in a reservoir attached to the hydro station at Niagara Falls. (The Logic)

Talking point: Another battery site, the Oneida Energy Storage Facility not far from Hagersville in Jarvis, Ont., is to add a further 250 megawatts of stored supply. Those two, and several others on the list of approved projects, are backed by First Nations governments as economic development initiatives that also help make the power grid greener and accommodate higher demand from broader electrification efforts. By storing electricity when demand is low and releasing it when demand is high, the system can reduce the need to call on generation from marginal producers—which in Ontario tend to be plants that burn natural gas.