EDITOR:
Once more Summerside shows leadership when it comes to the development and use of renewable energy. It's been especially aware of the importance of storage, in some ways the holy grail of renewable energy. The sun doesn't always shine, the wind always blows; so finding ways to store energy is what makes renewable energy useful. The heating blocks that stored surplus wind energy at night when it wasn't needed, in order to heat homes during the day was the first approach. Now, batteries will make this even more efficient.
There's one other lesson here. The fact that for decades Summerside owned and operated its own municipal electric utility, separate from Maritime Electric, gave the community a true sense of ownership and responsibility for how electricity was produced and distributed. Having aging diesel generators, the staff needed to maintain them, and only using them occasionally during the year didn't always look good on the books. What we see now is the payoff.
Ian Petrie,
Iona
