Cold Air from Wordpress

Parker Gallant has a new post covering the Industrial Conservation Initiative (ICI), or Class A Global Adjustment mechanism:  Ontario’s class distinction stings ordinary hydro customers.  In early 2010, then Minister of Energy Brad Duguid issued a directive to the OPA (Ontario Power Authority) instructing them to create and deliver an “industrial energy efficiency program” specifically for large transmission connected (TX) ratepayers. That directive led to the creation of the two classes of ratepayers that now exist in Ontario. It's an appropriate time to revisit the topic because this past week Ontario's Minister of Energy was touting the electricity cost-saving opportunities for businesses that qualify for participation in a newly expanded ICI, because those savings come from shifting costs to other consumers. If you are unfamiliar with the topic the latest article may inspire you to learn more, I recommend some articles for doing so at the end of this short post. One statem...

"Realism never makes for a good copy, as long as there are people who make a living from selling a dream instead" Perhaps those that remain in the quagmire will speak of this one who got out. Maybe not.

There's an Ontario Energy Report (OER) that drips out quarterly. It's often got a mistake on the first page. Half of that page is static graphics. The other half is some simple data presented in big fonts. The report could be useful as it contains data that is difficult to find elsewhere. The intent when it started, as I understood it, was to bring data from multiple sources together in a coherent fashion.  I suspect it was supposed to be definitive - to avoid people getting information from rogue sources such as Parker Gallant and I. The official data would be a good thing if it were credible - but the first page often reveals it is not. This quarter the very first data set - the "Transmission Grid-Connected Generation Output (Q1)" -  has errors. Ontario's use of gas in generation electricity during the first quarter was very low. It was lower than it's been in over 50 years. But it wasn't this low.