Three BESS facilities, with a combined capacity of 320 MWh, have entered operation in Vaughan and Guelph, Ontario, Canada. They have been developed by Alectra Energy Solutions and Convergent Energy and Power, which had won the contracts in the IESO's Expedited Long-Term 1 procurement in 2023, and each facility will now run under a 20-year contract.
Total storage: 320 MWh
Vaughan 3: 40 MW/160 MWh
Vaughan 1E: 20 MW/80 MWh
Arlen, Guelph: 20 MW/80 MWh
Procurement: IESO E-LT1
Contract term: 20 years
Status: Operational
Alectra Energy Solutions, a Canada-based energy services company, said on 6 November 2026 that the three BESS facilities it has built in Ontario with Convergent Energy and Power are now in operation. Two of the facilities have been placed in Vaughan and the third in Guelph, and together they give the provincial grid 320 MWh of storage.
It was in 2023 that the partners won the three contracts, in the Expedited Long-Term 1 (E-LT1) procurement of the Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO). Each facility now has a 20-year contract with the IESO. Of the three, Vaughan 3 on Rutherford Road is the largest, a 40 MW/160 MWh facility that is connected at 27.6 kV. Vaughan 1E, on Dufferin Street, is rated at 20 MW/80 MWh and uses the same voltage. Arlen, on Clair Road West in Guelph, is of the same size, but it is connected at 13.8 kV. Because each site stores four times its rating, each can deliver its full output for four hours.
Once charged, the batteries are to be discharged when demand is high, and this, the release noted, gives the IESO more latitude in balancing supply and demand. The ribbon at Vaughan 3 was cut by Stephen Lecce, the Ontario Minister of Energy and Mines, who toured the site with Alectra executives and with Jason Fitzsimmons, the President and CEO of the IESO. The minister said that the projects had been delivered on time and on budget, and that the three facilities could power roughly 80,000 homes. In his view, the provincial storage fleet would also send low-cost, off-peak nuclear power back to the grid when demand peaks.
Bringing these three battery storage facilities into operation is an important milestone for Alectra Energy Solutions and Ontario’s electricity system. These projects will strengthen reliability and support our communities’ growing energy needs for years to come.Brian Bentz, President and CEO of Alectra Inc
The Alectra group of companies serves more than one million homes and businesses across 17 communities in the Greater Golden Horseshoe. Convergent, for its part, has more than $1 billion invested in, or committed to, storage assets across North America.
The three facilities have been added to a storage base in Ontario that has grown steadily during 2026. In May, PowerBank Corporation began commercial operation of its 4.99 MW SFF 06 project in Cramahe, which had also secured a contract in the E-LT1 round of July 2023 and now operates under a 22-year agreement with the IESO. In January, Boralex had commissioned the 80 MW/320 MWh Sanjgon facility in the Municipality of Lakeshore, which was its first operational storage project in North America.