Industry report asks Ontario to procure 100-500 MW of behind-the-meter storage as a distinct reliability resource

Energy Storage Canada published a report on 2 September 2026 arguing that Ontario should procure distributed, behind-the-meter battery storage as a distinct reliability resource rather than continuing to buy capacity almost exclusively at transmission scale. The report, "Unlocking Distributed Storage Resources: Diversifying Ontario's Procurement Strategy to Include DERs", was produced with research support and funding from Peak Power Inc. It recommends a Distributed Reliability Track with an initial procurement of 100 to 500 MW, contracted through eight- to ten-year standard-offer agreements carrying defined availability and performance obligations. The central claim is about timing: the report argues such capacity could be deployed within 12 to 24 months using existing technology and private capital, without new transmission: faster, it says, than any conventional generation or transmission alternative. Around that headline sit the structural recommendations, which matter more for anyone at the edge of the Ontario system. The report asks for meter aggregation across battery portfolios, standardised compensation for non-wires alternatives, lower thresholds for wholesale market participation, faster interconnection, and coordinated dispatch signals. Those five items are a fair description of the barriers that keep small assets out of markets they are technically capable of serving, in Ontario and nearly everywhere else. A battery in a basement can respond in seconds; what it cannot do is meet a minimum bid size written for a gas peaker, or get a settlement meter recognised as part of a portfolio. The context the report cites is Ontario's supply position: the closure of the 2,100 MW Pickering nuclear station, and demand projected to grow 65% by 2050. This is an industry association's report, funded by a company that sells distributed storage services, and it should be read as advocacy with numbers rather than as an independent assessment. Energy Storage Canada represents more than 100 member organisations in the sector. Peak Power has a direct commercial interest in the procurement track being recommended. That does not make the argument wrong, the aggregation barriers it lists are real and documented in other jurisdictions, but it does mean the load-bearing claims are the proponents' own. Neither the 100 to 500 MW figure nor the 12-to-24-month deployment window has been tested by Ontario's system operator or its regulator, and this sweep found no response from either. [UNVERIFIED: deployment timeline, no-new-transmission claim]

The question worth putting to the IESO is narrower than the report's: not whether distributed storage could supply reliability, but which specific market rule it would have to break to try.