Just like we are the only G7 without high speed rail. Canada lags behind on everything.
this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2026
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Canada lags behind in everything because our only bar is "slightly better than the USA"
our healthcare lags, but its slightly better than the US
Education lags, but still slightly better than the US (is it?)
We lag behind in resisting populism and facism, but slightly better than the US
The list goes on...
Where does the US have high speed rail?
βHigh-speed rail (HSR) in the US is currently dominated by Amtrak's Acela (150β160 mph) in the Northeast Corridor, with major projects underway to bring 200+ mph service to the West, including Brightline West (Las VegasβLA, 2028) and California High-Speed Rail. These initiatives aim to connect city pairs in under 3 hours, offering alternatives to regional flightsβ
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_the_United_States
LOL. The LA-SF high speed rail has already spent $14B and not laid a single track.
The Toronto-Ottawa rail would be built by the same three contractors that ballooned the Eglinton LRT from $9B to $12B and delivered years late. That was for 20km. Now we want to try 450km??
Estimates now are $90B , so we can safely double that, if it ever gets finished in our lifetimes, while ON land owners corrupt with Dougie and Mark sell us the land at hyper-inflated prices. All for a rail line no one will actually use.
We can already do that distance with electric planes.
We could have overhead wire electric extended buses do the route on current highways on dedicated lanes at high speed, for a tiny fraction of the cost and time, but who gets rich off that?
In reality it's Detroit/Windsor to Quebec City. That's an extra 4million people living in the Detroit area, making the train even more valuable and used.
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It is not the future. It is NOW if we finally put this gas bullshit behind us.
It would help if we removed the idiotic tariffs on chinese solar panels.
Plenty of other places to buy cheap panels from. Including Canada.
Silfab and Heliene also have manufacturing in canada. All 3 of these companies are only completing the cells in canada, not full manufacturing, or atleast a few companies have told me that.
There are really cheap and good panels from Vietnam and Taiwan that beet/meet the same price point as topcon and some of the other Chinese panels.
The hard one is getting a canadian made inverter. Canadian solar rebrands the Chinese solis and deye inverters and calls them theirs.
I think every parking lot should be covered with solar. It could be used to help keep the snow and rain off pedestrians and help offset the electricity used for electric cars.
Why doesn't tidal energy generation come up in the conversation for renewables? Canada has a long coast line, surely there are a lot of great spots to utilise this technology?
I understand it's not viable for interior provinces, but the coasts could use it.
Solar is so stupid cheap to maintain. Just sit and watch to see if a sensor reads bad values. No moving parts. No water boiling. Works best when it's hot too (when lots of AC is being used).
Definitely, solar seems to be the best of all options. However, having multiple sources of power as redundancy increases stability, and helps with overlapping coverage. By this I mean, tidal can work regardless of sunshine levels/during night time, so it can cover the off hours of solar production.
Additionally, the coastal regions tend to be more wet and cloudy than other areas, so solar may not be as effective compared to say the prairies.
Genuinely it isn't a problem on today's grid. Just build solar and the storage methods will come through time. In the meantime existing fossil fuel infrastructure can fill in the gaps.
Makes sense, thanks!
The U.S. and Canada share 2 power grids, so their economics is about the same. Demand for new connections in the U.S. is really high, but regulations slow how many can be built. It limits how expensive electricity has gotten, at least somewhat. So unfortunately all that renewables have done is let us use more electricity.
It really is, hard part is sorting through the errors and figuring out just what in the world caused the error. The amount of hardware between the inverter and grid is impressive when you have a 100kw+ system. Over 250kw it gets even better because hydro needs to be able to remotely kill your power.
Great comment, I am compelled to translate for non-locals: βhydroβ is canadian for βthe electric companyβ.
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Probably because it's so uncommon. The only commercially viable tidal generator ever built in Canada (and one of the few in the world) was the one on the Bay of Fundy, and it didn't produce all that much electricity in grid terms (20MW, thank you Wikipedia). You need a lot of tidal water level change to get decent power out of tidal generation, so there are likely fewer sites than you think. Plus, one reason the Bay of Fundy station was shut down was that it was rather hard on the local sea life, although I expect some of the same mitigation strategies used on inland hydro dams could help with that if they wanted to replace it with a new station.
Getting turbines reliable while in salt water proved to be difficult.
Huh, TIL, thanks!
Solar is cool. But storage is the issue. I have panels at my house and Im on my second set of batteries for storage. But cold weather and snow not only kill panel output but if they're not properly insulated, it freezes batteries and destroys them. Lithium batteries cost a lot more and are even more susceptible to cold weather than lead acid or AGM. I can make a ton of power in summer, not so much in winter... which is why our house is still powered by a fuel powered grid and heated with gas.
Canada has the same issues just on a much larger scale. We can MAKE the power, we just cant store it easily or prevent snow from stopping generation without difficult workarounds. And no one wants to power a house with power that works part time - we're used to 99.9% reliability, no ones going to spend money on something LESS reliable.
The Drake Landing Solar Community (DLSC) was a planned community in Okotoks, Alberta, Canada, equipped with a central solar heating system and other energy efficient technologies. This heating system is the first of its kind in North America, although much larger systems have been built in northern Europe. The 52 homes (few variation of size and style, with average above-grade floor area of 145m2) in the community are heated with a solar district heating system that is charged with heat originating from solar collectors on the garage roofs and is enabled for year-round heating by underground seasonal thermal energy storage (STES).[1]
The system was designed to model a way of addressing global warming and the burning of fossil fuels. The solar energy is captured by 800 solar thermal collectors[2] located on the roofs of all 52 houses' garages.[3] It is billed as the first solar powered subdivision in North America,[4] although its electricity and transportation needs are provided by conventional sources.
In 2012 the installation achieved a world record solar fraction of 97%; that is, providing that amount of the community's heating requirements with solar energy over a one-year time span.[5][6]
In 2015β2016 season the installation achieved a solar fraction of 100%.[7][8] This was achieved by the borehole thermal storage system (BTES) finally reaching high temperature after years of charging, as well as improving control methods, operating pumps at lower speed most of the time, reducing extra energy need as well using weather forecasts to optimize transfer of heat between different storage tanks and loops. During some other years, auxiliary gas heaters are used for a small fraction of the year to provide heat to a district loop. The systems operate at coefficient of performance of 30.
But it died after 17 successful years (was only a pilot for 4 years) because Alberta.
I am aware of that project but had no idea it died.
A little research says it didnt die "because Alberta". It died because it became too expensive to fix and became unreliable, and the houses were converted to natural gas heating. Go figure. From cool to reliable - I rest my case. Albertans at -40c care about reliability.
Wiki: "In 2020, the system started showing signs of deterioration resulting in significant maintenance issues. System components, knowledge, and technical expertise for repairs were becoming increasingly challenging to find. In response to system failures, the Drake Landing Solar Company added redundancies to the system to be sure that homes in the community were receiving heat.
After a thorough investigation on available next steps, it was determined that the significant reinvestment required to have the system operate reliably, was simply something that neither the Drake Landing Solar Company board nor the collective community could afford.
In 2024, a decommissioning process for the Drake Landing Solar Community began, where the majority of the 52 homes were converted to natural gas-fired furnaces."
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Canada also has a lot of hydro power. In theory we could use excess solar from the day to pump water up into the reservoir to be used for hydro generation at night or during peak use. It may not be the most energy effecient, but it could be effective at scale and cheap enough to implement before building and investing in physical batteries. I may be wrong but i think there are some places that already do this.
Micro hydro this is feasible. Many tall buildings already have water tanks near the top.
Sorry i wasn't speaking micro, I'm talking like lake and river scaled hydro. Some places even build reservoirs specifically for pumped solar storage.
I'm just thinking they should install micro hydro on buildings that have raised water storage. Recapture some of the energy it took to get it up there.
A 4β pipe with 400β of head altitude feeds a 3/4β nozzle pelton wheel with around 7000w @ 120v in a basic bush install. I am sure a well engineered system could provide double that or more, but a rooftop tank might run out at night unless it was quite big, and that is definitely micro hydro.
calculations based on living with such a system
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Even without pumping, hydroelectricity is great to complement intermittent storage. A dam is storing a lot of potential energy that can be released or not at the right time.
There is a big dam close to where I live. In winter the level goes down progressively and as soon as spring comes back, the solar panels are producing again and the electrical demands goes down so the lake level goes back up progressively.
In summer the lake is full so all the tourists can enjoy the activities on the water.
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Can the battery not be in the house away from the elements?
I think the fire hazard is the main reason.
That, and in my case the panels have to be away from the house to gather the most sunlight due to tall trees. Running high amp power across a yard is highly impractical due to size and expense of big cables. But you're right, I wouldn't put lithium batteries inside my house, nor would my insurance company like it.
Hybrid solar and geothermal is the way to go.
Geothermal is cool. And impressive. But I have yet to see anyone who could afford on a single home.
For larger installations, we had a geothermal plant just a few miles from our place in the US. Was great til it started leaking sour gas. Eventually the company had to buy out the homes of the people who were closer to the plant because of the health concerns.
Every power source has issues.
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Storage is not an issue, you do not need to store solar power in Canada.
It is if you want to go off carbon based power. Where do you get power when the sun is down? Especially in winter with short days?
Canada is no where near needing to worry about battery storage. Maybe after 20 years of installing solar, this would be a concern. Currently it isn't.
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