Delivering a massive new electrical transformer to just outside Schumacher on Thursday set the stage for a major funding announcement by Hydro One.
Vice president of engineering and construction Ryan Docherty says $80-million is being put into the transformer station there, to strengthen reliability and resiliency of the electrical network right across Northern Ontario.
“Hydro One will continue to reinvest in communities like Timmins,” he stated, “to ensure economic growth and to ensure that when industry needs power, it will be there.”
This is the latest step in “electrifying Ontario”, identified as the future of the economy. The goal is having twice the electrical capacity we have now, by the year 2050.
Ontario’s mines minister is heralding the investment as critical to the economic future of the province.
George Pirie was at the announcement. He acknowledges that ensuring twice the power supply as today in the next quarter century is also helpful to mining critical minerals for things like electric-car batteries.
Those minerals are expected to come from the Canada Nickel mine being developed north of Timmins and from mines in the Ring of Fire in Northwestern Ontario.
