Generators are sized for the worst second of the day — then spend most of their hours idling. What 136 battery projects from around the world say about powering job sites in BC and Alberta.

In the winter of 2023–24, on a 20-acre mixed-use site at Riverbank Landing in Edmonton, Award Construction did something few Canadian contractors had tried. They took the tower crane off its 300 kVA diesel generator, which had been running 24 hours a day, and put it on a battery. A 100 kW generator topped the battery up for about two and a half hours a day and then shut off.

Generator runtime fell 91%. United Rentals, which supplied the system, estimates fuel use fell about 77% — roughly 7,000 litres a month. The battery kept the crane working through a cold Alberta winter with snow piled on the unit.

That project kept coming back to me this year. Since early 2026 I have been collecting every battery energy storage (BESS) case study I could find: vendor PDFs, rental-company results, contractor reports, government studies and the odd screenshot from a trade show booth. This fall I pulled it all into one database and asked a simple question: where do batteries actually earn their place on a job site, and what does that mean for us in Western Canada?

Here is what I found.

The pattern hiding in plain sight

Every project in the database comes back to one fact. Generators are specified for the worst second of the day — a crane lift, a motor start, a hoist leaving the ground. Then they spend most of their hours idling along at a fraction of that.

Across construction sites, film sets and events, published sources put typical generator loading at 5–30%. Metro Vancouver’s study of BC film production found generators often under 30% loaded. Precision Drilling measured 26% on a Canadian rig. One Spanish festival logged an average of 8%.

At those loads, diesel engines are badly inefficient. Spec-sheet data from Atlas Copco, Generac and Cat generators shows an engine burns roughly 10–30% of its full-load fuel just idling. At 10% load it uses about twice the fuel per kilowatt-hour that it uses at 70%. You are paying for a large engine to keep itself warm.

A battery breaks that link. It handles the peak, so the generator can be sized to the average — and that smaller generator only needs to run when it can run efficiently.

What the numbers say

The database holds 136 projects from 16 countries and territories, drawn from about 38 battery makers, rental fleets and operators. Ten are in Canada. Of the 136, 121 report a measured or estimated saving. Among projects that publish each figure:

Diesel use fell by a median of 75%. The middle half of projects reported cuts of 48–90%.
Generator engine hours fell by a median of 83%. That means fewer services, refuels and oil changes, and less night-time noise.
Generators were typically 3–4 times smaller where both before and after sizes were published. At least 12 projects removed diesel entirely by running batteries from small grid connections.

A caution: most of these figures come from the companies selling or renting the equipment. I rated every case by how directly its numbers are stated, and I treat the results as strong indicators, not guarantees. But the pattern is consistent across 38 suppliers and three continents, and that consistency is what convinced me.

Where batteries win

I grouped the projects into 13 use cases and ranked them for BC and Alberta, weighing the strength of the evidence against market size, how much pain the problem causes here, and regulatory pressure. Seven stand out.

1. Tower cranes and hoists

This is the clearest win and the best-documented use case, with 28 projects. In Birmingham, UK, four tower cranes on battery cut diesel 98% and engine hours 96%, for a net saving of about £147,000 in roughly six months. In Las Vegas, two cranes and two hoists went from 1,040 kVA of planned generators to 140 kVA. And then there is Edmonton.

2. Sites with a small or late grid connection

A battery charged continuously from a small service can run loads five to ten times its size. Near Lake Zurich, a crane delivering 110 kVA peaks ran from an 11 kW, 16-amp temporary connection. In northwest England, a 28-storey tower ran on a 44-amp supply that replaced more than 1,600 kVA of diesel. Anyone who has waited on a utility connection in Metro Vancouver will see why this matters.

3. Diesel-plus-battery hybrids

Where there is no grid, a right-sized generator charges the battery at its efficient operating point and then shuts off. On an off-grid biogas plant build in Sweden, daily diesel use fell from 200 litres to about 40. Results vary more here than anywhere else: drilling rigs, whose engines are already well loaded, show cuts of 8–48%, not 80%.

4. Site offices and welfare trailers

These are small loads with a lot of waste. A washroom trailer pilot in Niagara cut diesel from 67 to about 17 litres a day, and the generator went from running 24 hours to four. Seventeen office trailers in the US cut generator runtime 78%. Every general contractor’s compound is a candidate.

5. Film and television

I came to construction energy from film and TV, and this one is personal. Productions move daily into residential streets with strict noise and idling rules. Metro Vancouver estimated that a typical mid-size BC production burns around 1,059 litres of diesel a day. Batteries are silent next to the set. Virgin River, filmed here, went from one battery unit to eight across three seasons.

6. Data centres and critical builds

These produce the biggest absolute numbers. On a hyperscale data centre build in Kansas City, a battery serving a 24-trailer office complex saved about 204,000 litres of diesel and 464 tonnes of CO₂ in seven months. In Minnesota, converting 15 trailer generators to hybrids avoided almost 40,000 engine hours and 130 service visits. With Alberta’s data centre build-out underway, this one deserves attention.

7. Events and festivals

Event loads swing from show peak to near zero overnight, and generators get doubled up for redundancy. At the Delray Beach Open tennis tournament, one small generator plus a battery cut fuel cost 43% even though power demand quadrupled. When the generator failed partway through, the battery carried the load for three hours.

The Edmonton winter test

Every conversation I have about batteries in Alberta eventually reaches the same question: what happens at minus 30?

The honest answer is that cold matters. Lithium batteries lose usable capacity below zero, many cannot charge below 0 °C, and many units are rated only to −20 °C. The fix is engineering, not avoidance: specify heated enclosures, size the battery with a winter allowance, and keep a small generator in the system for the deep-cold weeks.

Riverbank Landing showed it works. When I modelled a similar Edmonton crane, the hybrid setup saved about 41% of total power cost — roughly $18,000 per 30 days — even after paying for the battery rental. My model predicts a smaller fuel cut than United Rentals reported, 69% against their estimated 77%. I would rather under-promise.

“…one of the first in Canada … to fully power its site tower crane entirely by battery.”
— Brian Hennessey, Construction Manager, Award Construction

Why the case is getting stronger in BC and Alberta

Diesel is volatile. BC’s reference diesel price ranged from $1.52 to $2.64 a litre over the past 12 months, and Vancouver hit about $2.68 in August. Every litre a battery saves is price risk removed.
Grid connections are slow. A City of Vancouver sample of multiplex projects took 23–27 weeks to energize with overhead service and 45–61 weeks underground. A battery on a basic service can bridge that gap.
Demand charges reward peak shaving. BC Hydro charges large general-service customers $13.30 per kW per month. In Alberta, general-service wires charges run about $12–18.50 per kW per month, with ratchets on past peaks.
Noise and engine rules are tightening. Vancouver construction hours run 7:30 am to 8 pm on weekdays, and Metro Vancouver’s non-road diesel engine fees rise again in 2027.
Carbon now sits with owners. Site diesel has carried no consumer carbon tax since April 2025. The value of the tonnes avoided now shows up in owner specifications, ESG reporting and funding programs, not in tax.

The honest part: where batteries don’t pay

When I built cost models for ten Western Canada scenarios, the results ran from about break-even to 69% savings once battery rental was included. The losers taught me as much as the winners.

Steady, well-loaded engines. A remote camp running a generator above 30–40% load all day leaves little waste to recover. The battery needs solar, or a redundant generator retired, to pay.
Very short jobs. On a six-day festival, delivering and setting up a second unit ate most of the fuel saving. The case there rests on noise, redundancy and sponsor reporting.
Winter heating loads. An Edmonton office compound heated electrically saved 18%, not 40%. Check whether heat is propane or electric first.
Battery rental prices. Almost no North American rental company publishes battery rates, so get quotes. Trailer-mounted batteries also do not qualify for the federal 30% clean technology tax credit.

The biggest wins share three traits: a low load factor (cranes, offices, nights), a long duration (months, not days), and a grid feed that is small or late.

Five questions to ask about your next site

Does a generator run more than one shift, or overnight?
Is the average load well below the peak? (A load factor under about 20–25% is a strong signal.)
Is grid power late, small or expensive to upgrade?
Are noise, fumes or emissions reporting a concern?
Will the job run longer than about a month?

Two yes answers make a site worth a closer look. Three or more, and the evidence says savings are likely.

Power is a project resource

We plan cranes, concrete and crews down to the hour. Power usually gets a generator sized for the worst case and a fuel truck on standing order. The projects in this database show what happens when power is planned like any other project resource: smaller engines, fewer hours, quieter sites and numbers you can report.

Batteries are not the answer everywhere, and I would be wary of anyone who says they are. But for cranes, small grid feeds, site offices, film sets and long-running jobs in BC and Alberta, the evidence is now hard to ignore.

If you are planning temporary power for a project in 2027 and want to test it against these numbers, I’m happy to compare notes.

Nicholas McKenzie is the founder of kWattWorks, a Western Canada construction energy advisory firm that helps contractors, owners and producers model, integrate and verify battery-first site power. kwattworks.com

Sources and notes

Figures are as published by each source; most project results are vendor- or rental-company-reported. Western Canada savings come from kWattWorks scenario modelling at October 2026 mid-case prices (planning-grade, ±20–30%). Key sources:

What 136 Battery Projects Taught Me About Powering Job Sites in BC and Alberta

The pattern hiding in plain sight

What the numbers say