Nonsense in the IESO new quarterly reporting

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



peaksaverPLUS was the big saver on the first page of the table, and maybe they just put the savings in the wrong quarter. Right?

Probably not.

The biggest saver on page 2 is Demand Response 3, and I don't believe it was instigated at any time in 2014 (I doubt peaksaverPLUS was either). These are very specific savings of megawatts considering they are for programs that weren't used.


The IESO did unnecessarily activate DR3 February 19th of 2015 (my understanding it was the first time in 18 months). Here's February 19th's The IESO has activated Demand Response (with my addition of net exports out of Ontario added in brackets);

HE 18: 335 MW  (2583 MW net export)
HE 19: 335 MW  (2802 MW)
HE 20: 335 MW  (2611 MW)
HE 21: 335 MW  (2722 MW)

Idiot wind reporting

My friend Parker Gallant wrote, in an article today;
...the professor claims: “Ontario is Canada’s leading province in the wind power sector with 2,480 MW of installed capacity”. The information, obtained from the Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO), as of January 26, 2015 is wrong. A visit to the CanWEA website claims 3,490 MW of installed capacity in Ontario as at December 31, 2014. Haldimand’s council should rely on the CanWEA information which is over 1,000 MW (40.1%) higher!

I understand that the IESO shows a figure for wind that makes some sense to them - they don't count a site until they consider it commissioned. But the IESO's figure is more a measure of how retarded their commissioning process is than anything else. Here's my tracking of the IESO's wind generator including reporting the day sites first produced above 85% of nameplate: the ones at the end are the ones the IESO probably just hasn't got around to commissioning and so just ignore in reporting.

Today the IESO site still shows the installed capacity of wind as the same 2,543 MW indicated in its Q4 2014 report, with another 425 megawatts embedded in local distribution company grids.

Getting Parker Gallant and I to agree with CanWEA (3,490 megawatts) is an accomplishment, but not one the IESO should strive for.

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