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Great idea. My power supplier currently has rates based on TOU (Time Of Use - http://www.torontohydro.com/si...), and I'd love to be able to charge up the battery supply for my house overnight at cheap rates, then run off the battery the rest of the time.

Are your night rates less than half of your day rates? I ask because battery charging isn't 100% efficient. I don't know the charging efficiency of the Tesla packs, but many battery types are only around 50% efficient in charging. By 50% efficient, I mean when charging you put in about twice as much energy as you can take back out later.

Great idea. My power supplier currently has rates based on TOU (Time Of Use - http://www.torontohydro.com/si...), and I'd love to be able to charge up the battery supply for my house overnight at cheap rates, then run off the battery the rest of the time.

I just hope it's not going to be one of those "Only available in the United States" deals.

Is all about investment. The City of Toronto is reportedly well behind its investments in the local Toronto infrastructure. The less you invest keeping equipment up-to-date the more breakdowns you will have. http://www.torontohydro.com/si...

You're lumping too many people together, as if everyone who doesn't think exactly like you is part of the same category.

I'm all down for some of that wave and wind power. I actually think they're kind of neat lookin' afterall. Toronto's downtown wind turbine ain't such a sore sight for my pretty eyes. I guess a handful of broken seaguls is better than having them drop dead cos of --insert pollution related disease here--.
I'm also very down with putting solar panels up everywhere that's suitable tho I'm unsure of how useful they'd be during winter (when our rooftops here in most parts of Canada are filled with snow).

The problem ain't with nuclear reactors. I lurves them science and them cheap power, the problem is what do we do with the leftovers for the next 50k years. Anything that can KILL things by virtue of it's sheer proximity is something that, you know, concerns me. Making it far, far away from my house doesn't really solve the problem, since at some point in the current processes you're still gonna get some form of leftovers that glow in the dark that you can't reuse.
This is, you know, not cool.

Mind you, all things considered, I'd still prefer it over coal power plants. Still not has good as not having them at all tho.

Some provinces/states use what they call a "smart meter" to charge for electricity. Those meters not only record how much electricity you used, but when you used it. They can then charge more for using power during peak hours (11am to 5pm) than for using the same amount of power during off-peak hours (10pm to 7am). That is an attempt to encourage people to use less power during peak hours (therefore reducing the peak and everything it involves on the power grid).

Ref: See Toronto Hydro

I've seen this turbine driving in and out of Toronto on the QEW, and it's HUGE. I visited the website and I noticed how the website avoid showing pictures that give you a real understanding the size of a 30-story turbine.

I especially found this page misleading where they show a diagram at the bottom right of the page comparing a 2 story house with a 30 story turbine and the CN tower.

They actually distort the scale to make the turbine appear to be 8-10 stories and then cleverly place it against the base of an enourmous CN tower where your imagination is left to consider how far up it goes.

Then they have the gall to poo-poo you for being suspicious if it's really that high. I've seen it, and yes it is.

Unpopulated? We have a turbine a couple of kilometres from me here in downtown Toronto.

Electric cars still require electricity which is produced by fossil fuel burning power plants.

Firstly, the company mentioned in the article description is called Hydro Quebec for a reason - much of the electric power they produce is hydroelectric.

Secondly, a car that burns fossil fuels directly will always have to burn fossil fuels, but a car that runs on electricity, even if it currently pollutes indirectly via fossil fuel burning power plants, will immediately be able to take advantage of more environmentally-friendly produced electricity as soon as it becomes available.

Hopefully the public is starting to wise up and we can build new nuclear plants again, and also wind is starting to be used in North America. And here are some nice geeky pics of the wind turbine in Toronto being constructed and some views from the top.

Electric cars still require electricity which is produced by fossil fuel burning power plants.

Firstly, the company mentioned in the article description is called Hydro Quebec for a reason - much of the electric power they produce is hydroelectric.

Secondly, a car that burns fossil fuels directly will always have to burn fossil fuels, but a car that runs on electricity, even if it currently pollutes indirectly via fossil fuel burning power plants, will immediately be able to take advantage of more environmentally-friendly produced electricity as soon as it becomes available.

Hopefully the public is starting to wise up and we can build new nuclear plants again, and also wind is starting to be used in North America. And here are some nice geeky pics of the wind turbine in Toronto being constructed and some views from the top.