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The Rural Voice, 1980-10, Page 19KEITH ROULSTON Something small and sensible BY KITH ROULSTON It was a refreshing vacation (even if it did rain the whole time) last summer when some friends invited us to a cruise up the Trent river system. For us landlubbers it was a new experience negotiating the various locks that raised or lowered us fifty or so feet in a matter of minutes. It was at one of those locks that we ran across a power dam. It wasn't a very impressive looking thing, nothing like the pictures of the huge installations at Churchill Falls or James Bay that we've come to think of as typical hydro generating sites. It looked like an overgrown version of the old mill dam on the property my father bought a few years ago. In fact, it made me laugh a little bit to see it. How much power could this dam be contributing to the huge needs of the province today? Why it couldn't supply enough power to fully utilize one strand of those huge power lines crossing the country from the Bruce Nuclear Power Development. It was when I looked at the tarnished old plaque on the side of the building on top of the dam that I began to rethink things. The dam had been built just after the turn of the century to supply hydro electric power to the town of Orillia. In those days it likely provided more power than the town could use. Today it probably provides only a small fraction of the needs of the modern town. All the power it generated was carried away on lines on one set of wooden poles. In the eyes of a modernist it didn't look very efficient. And yet, I thought, here is this plant that has been kicking out power day in and day out for 70 years or so. There isn't anybody here to look after it. It just keeps doing its job at very little cost. The big Bruce plant may be more glamourous, may pump billions into the local economy but it can't touch this battered antique for efficiency. Those thoughts came to mind again recently when I read an article in the Globe and Mail's financial section that a Montreal company which builds huge hydro electric projects around the world also sees tremendous potential in producing equipment for small hydro -electric projects. The U.S. as usual is ahead of Canada in such thinking. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers estimated in 1977 that there are nearly 50,000 existing dams at least 25 feet high in that country that if fitted with small electrical generators could produce 55 million kilowatts of power, the equivalent of 85 "good-sized" nuclear plants. It didn't even tally the number of smaller dams that could also produce power. There was a time when nearly every town had its own electrical generating facilities. It had to because there was as yet no network of power lines to Zink small communities with gigantic power installations such as Niagara Falls. But when Ontario Hydro did reach each town the urge to be "modern" quickly led local people to abandon their local power supply and switch to "Hydro". There were many benefits to the takeover by Ontario Hydro of course. Power was relatively cheap; someone said the use of electricity gave everyone the chance to have slaves. In addition there was the blessing of standardizing the kind of electricity provided so that you only got 60 cycle and A.C. Many of the old generators just sat there unused for many years. It was only in the last decade that the old generators were taken out of the power house at Wingham. It is ironic that while those generators were being removed, others were salvaging generators to harness small rivers to provide inexpensive power. At Benmiller, for instance, the old grist mill and the woollen mill have been turned into ritzy hotels, yet deep in the heart of the grist millthe wheel that once turned water power into power to grind the grain now is hooked to a generator which lowers the bill for heating the hotel complex and its heated swimming pool and other power needs by thousands of dollars a year. In the U.S. the Public Utility Regulatory Policy Act of 1978 opened the way for the reuse of these smaller power producing plants. It ruled that all large utilities must permit small energy producing facilities to interconnect with the power grid and pay the owner of these facilities a reasonable price. This has led a number of small entrepreneurs in that country to fix up the old generating sites and pump hydro into the electrical system, making a small but healthy profit for themselves and helping the energy crisis in the U.S. The potential should be even greater in Canada. We have more fresh water than any country on earth. We have thousands of old millsites dotted around the country. We have publicly owned electrical utilities which could easily be forced to accept the kind of policies on the books in the U.S. But as usual we're lagging far behind. We're too busy with the glamour toys of major hydro projects and atomic plants to think of something as small and sensible as small hydro. H. GERRITS BARN EQUIPMENT LTD. Manufacturers -- Dealers Specializing in Complete Hog and Dairy Equipment THE NEW GENERATION SILO UNLOADER! edge Fag LES THE POW-R-TRAC 2 R, R. 5, Clinton 519-482-7296 "Practical confining systems for less" 1 1 THE RURAL VOICE/OCTOBER 1890 PG. 17