How Ontarians can take power back from big energy plants

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How Ontarians can take power back from big energy plants

Until now, it has generally been a one-way street: utility companies operating big power plants generate energy and distribute it to businesses and homeowners.

But more and more we are seeing customers generating, transmitting, and storing their own power, and in some cases selling it back to the grid. That was the message at a panel at the International Economic Forum of the Americas conference in Toronto last week.

Experts have a name for these small-scale activities: distributed energy. It’s a phenomenon that is growing rapidly in Ontario: This month, the Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) reported distributed energy now accounts for 3,600 megawatts of installed supply, up from practically nothing a decade ago.

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North America Works -- Part III: Detroit/Windsor border-hopping nurses

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North America Works -- Part III: Detroit/Windsor border-hopping nurses

Lee Anne Raper is living the North American life along another border, the one that separates Canada and the U.S. A nurse at the Henry Ford Hospital close to downtown Detroit, Raper doesn’t live in Detroit. Actually, she doesn’t even live in the United States. For the past 19 years, she has driven to work every day across the Ambassador Bridge from her home in Windsor, Ontario, a trip of only about six miles.

“I can see where I live from the 17th story of the hospital,” she says. “I actually know some of the (border) guards. They call me by name and ask me if I’m going to work.”

Raper is just one of about 800 Canadian nurses who cross the border every day to work in the U.S. These border-hopping nurses highlight some of the similarities but also the differences between the economies of the two North American neighbors that share a 5,525-mile border and enjoy one of the world’s longest-standing and most amicable relationships.

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