Cold Air from Wordpress

I received an e-mail last week requesting help responding to claims attributed to a wind-industry friendly administration in Ontario claiming that we were, at times, importing electricity. I've pulled some figures in response and thought I'd take a couple of minutes to post my comments. Of course we often have some imports into Ontario - because it's a market connected to other markets. However, the number of hours Ontario imports more than it exports dropped from market opening (in May 2002) to the recession of 2009/09.

Ontario's IESO has released reams of reporting today. My initial take is it communicates an organization is decline. The least credible claim I've picked up on so far is in the new Conservation Progress Report for the 4th quarter of 2014 . Here's how peaksaverPLUS is described : peaksaver PLUS is only activated on very hot summer days (from May 1st until September 30th) when demand is at a peak so..... couldn't possibly be any savings in Q4

This was first posted on my coldaircurrents site  - which I use for posting found items of interest. This post went beyond pointing out OPG's 2014 results, with enough of an edge I'm double posting it here. OPG's final 2014 results have been released and the net income they are reporting is, if my records are correct, the highest since 1998 [Toronto]: – Ontario Power Generation Inc. (OPG or Company) today reported income of $568 million, before extraordinary gain, for 2014 compared to $135 million for 2013. Net income, after extraordinary gain, for 2014 was $811 million, compared to $135 million in 2013. Let me tell you about extraordinary items. but first... There are new business segments for contracted generation (biomass, hydro and gas partnerships) and eliminated business segments (thermal, or fossil fuels, and non-regulated hydro). I've flipped through OPG's 2014  MANAGEMENT’S DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS  and spotted some things of interest to me, relevant to man...

I live a little north of the commonly perceived end of Mississauaga's world (Barrie), but actually still within the orbit of the Toronto area. The first hint of trouble yesterday was in an e-mail I received at 5:22 pm yesterday originating in Scarborough: I have had four power outages so far today and am ready to strangle ... I'm not condoning the sentiment. heh heh heh Just after 7 the first phone call (south Etobicoke); with the request to see what's happening with their power situation because not only is their power out, the data wasn't working with the cell provider either. Hilarity ensues: nothing on Toronto Hydro outage map for the area, so I entered an outage form - which after entering saw the screen change to a screen telling me if I have a problem to fill out the form below - which did not exist. I gave the phone number for Toronto Hydro out to my caller, and wished them well.

Good post on what seems to be the bastard of the renewables family: "biomass... is leading the growth of renewable energy in Europe. For whatever reason, this fact is more or less never mentioned."

Happy March I posted a serious (a.k.a. confusing) piece on Cold Air yesterday,  Ontario is the sucker of first choice for off-price electricity  and today I've run the routines on February data. The Toronto Star advises February was Toronto's coldest month ever.  I didn't read beyond the title, but I don't think they meant emotionally. "Ontario Demand" as defined by the IESO, was up about 2% from last year's also pretty cold February. And yet, average hourly net exports were higher than ever - although the fewer days didn't allow the total net exports to reach January's high. [caption id="attachment_353" align="alignnone" width="660"] graphic captured from http://data.luftonline.net/preliminary-monthly-report[/caption] On Friday the IESO release preliminary Global Adjustment [GA] figures : the first estimate of the dollar total is $474 million, and the second estimate of the class B rate is $40.95. These estimates ma...