TORONTO — Local distribution companies and bulk transmission system operators need to improve their alignment as LDCs transition from passive roles overseeing poles and wires, IESO CEO Lesley Gallinger told attendees of the Ontario Electricity Distributors Association’s ENERCOM 2026 conference March 23.
“I think the role that LDCs are taking on is becoming much more pivotal to future reliability and affordability conversations,” Gallinger said during a Q&A session with Elexicon CEO Amanda Klein. “The LDCs are front-running the adoption of emerging technologies like electric vehicles and heat pumps, and that’s useful information [for] the bulk system. And the work that LDCs have done to integrate [distributed energy resources] through their distribution systems is also … helpful from a technical perspective.”
LDCs and IESO need to improve their alignment on regional planning, forecast assumptions and operational practices, Gallinger said, citing a need for real-time distribution data.
“You have never been asked to do more than today,” Minister of Energy and Mines Stephen Lecce told the distributors in a lunchtime speech. “There has never been more constraints and pressure on the electricity system. You’re doing something right. You guys work together. You’re thinking ahead. You’re de-risking. You’re collaborating. You’re trying something new. You’re being bold. You’re challenging the status quo.”
Ontario and the federal government are making big bets on nuclear power, pledging to build 16,000 MW of new generation, including four small modular nuclear reactors and up to 4,800 MW of additional capacity at the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station. (See Ontario Integrated Energy Plan Boosts Gas, Nukes.)
Energy ‘Quadrilemma’
The passage of Bill 40, which made economic development part of the mission for IESO and the Ontario Energy Board (OEB), has turned the traditional energy trilemma — the balance of reliability, affordability and sustainability — into a “quadrilemma,” Gallinger said.
“The challenge lies in the fact that all four dimensions are interconnected. If you prioritize [an] outcome for one of the dimensions, you lose perhaps something on one of the other dimensions,” she said.
“Economic policy and energy policy are now inextricably linked. And so that leaves us kind of a narrow band for error,” she said. “We’re moving now to continuously and proactively plan. So rather than the five-year ‘set it and forget it’ model, we’re continuing to intake new information and … iterate on those plans. And that will allow us to stay adaptable and responsive to those evolving circumstances and hopefully help us get the quadrilemma equation right.”
Mark Olsheski, vice president of energy at Sussex Strategy, said increasing distribution-based generation will be crucial to navigating the next decade, before new nuclear capacity goes into service.
“We have well over 2,000 MW of embedded solar in Ontario, most of which is coming to the end of its contract. … There’s right now not … a clear plan for how that solar gets renewed,” he said during a panel discussion.
“This is just what’s already on rooftops and in fields at the distribution level. But I think that we need to deploy significant resources currently not [planned] within this window, that don’t involve big procurements for large gas or storage assets. The greatest opportunity to do that … is going to be at the distribution level.”
He cited the importance of the OEB’s Centralized Capacity Information Map, released in January, which provides data for both load and DER connections. “There are big swaths of the province that are pretty red — like you can’t really plug in a toaster oven without something blowing up. So certainly, there’s a lot of work that needs to be” done.
