Dear Editor,
Have I got a deal for your readers. I’ll trade you three work horses for one race horse. The catch is, it is a limited time offer. Have you heard this before?
Maritime Electric had a half billion dollar, 150 MW capacity proposal before IRAC. I agreed with this part of the proposal. It included 5 Wartsila diesel engine driven generators (work horses) at 18 MW capacity each.
Now they have pulled that proposal and put a 100 MW capacity, limited time offer, two race horses (50 MW capacity each combustion turbine) proposal before IRAC.
In the proposal one of the reasons given is that the peak load set a couple years ago is not an anomaly but here to stay. That is what the president and vice president at Maritime Electric are now saying. I have reason to believe, this is my opinion, that at the technical level Maritime Electric has known this for a long time. After all, in the fine print of the original proposal they state that the peak load is calculated at minus 14 degrees Celsius.
The latest Energy Minister seems to be playing along with Maritime Electric. This is a 180-degree turn from distributed generation on PEI with local capacity ownership to a 100 per cent Maritime Electric controlled system with guaranteed continued reliance on New Brunswick Power.
Why is the PEI Cabinet doing this? Surely the farmers in cabinet know the difference between a work horse and a race horse? Let me remind cabinet, with a race horse, you open the gate and the horse runs flat out at full speed for a short period of time. A work horse pulls the load as required. It can do this for a long time as long as you give it water and food.
Remember during Fiona the Irving tank farm had no power and couldn’t deliver fuel? Even though Maritime Electric had a 50 MW combustion turbine (race horse) sitting next door.
Why are we now buying more race horses? We need work horses on PEI. Work horses can work alongside wind farms and solar farms to keep the lights on during power loss from New Brunswick. Race horses cannot.
John te Raa
York
