Summerside heads into winter with no battery storage

The City of Summerside, P.E.I., is heading into winter with no battery capacity to store the power generated by its solar farm, after a battery fire at the Sunbank facility in September.

Summerside’s chief administrative officer said the loss will take about five megawatts of dispatchable power out of the municipal utility’s winter supply, and likely for a couple of winters beyond this one. “It will certainly put us in a different and sort of challenging position for the winter in comparison to the last couple of winters,” the officer told CBC News on Friday.

The fire began on Sept. 7 and was quickly contained, but it triggered a voluntary shelter-in-place notice and school closures, CTV News Atlantic reported. A battery bank at the site kept burning for two weeks before the fire was declared out on Sept. 21. The cause has not been determined.

The battery was used to store solar energy and help the city manage peak demand over the winter months. Without it, Summerside Electric will lean more heavily on the power it buys through Maritime Electric’s transmission system, which relies on two submarine cables linking the Island to the mainland and electricity purchased from New Brunswick Power.

Summerside generates about 60 per cent of its electricity from renewable sources such as solar and wind, the city’s chief administrative officer said, but it still depends on Maritime Electric for power it buys from New Brunswick. Residents received warnings last winter of possible rolling blackouts after an equipment failure at Maritime Electric’s Sherbrooke substation, which supplies part of the city’s power.

The official said a new agreement with Maritime Electric should help fill the gap this year. Maritime Electric has agreed to provide what is called conditional firm service, and the city’s utility team believes Summerside is in a better position than it was at this time last year, the official said. The agreement is not a long-term one, and the city hopes to secure its own subsea cable to the mainland so it can operate more independently.

CBC News requested an interview with Maritime Electric about the agreement, but no one was made available.

For residents, it is worth knowing how to keep food safe in a power outage, and which energy bill grants are available by province.

Sources: CBC News, Oct. 30, 2026; CTV News Atlantic, Sept. 21, 2026.

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