Cold Air from Wordpress

Onshore and offshore wind turbines fed an all-time record of 32.6GW into the German grid on Wednesday, according to transmission operator TenneT said. The high output forced transmission system operators to apply costly measures in order to stabilise the grid. Since 9 November, TSOs have had to curtail 300MW of wind capacity and call up a daily amount between 200MW and 2.2GW of Germany’s winter reserve capacity to stabilise the grid. The report on Germany, based on information from its "transmission operator" might have a related report in Ontario, which may have had record wind output recently except for the curtailments of a lot more than Germany's 300MW. Data from Ontario's IESO indicates record wind ouptut of 3,297 megawatts for hour 16 of October 19th. Other data indicates that earlier on the 19th, approximated 2,310 megawatts of wind was being curtailed (in hour 3). My reporting for the day  estimates over 26,000 megawatts of potential generation from contracted...

a primer for yesterday's News Release from Ontario's Ministry of Finance The Office of the Auditor General of Ontario reported on the Ontario government's flippant disinterest in accounting for the Debt Retirement Charge (DRC) in its 2011 Annual Report : Given that the DRC has been collected from electricity consumers for almost a decade and that more than $8 billion in DRC revenue has been collected during that time, our view is that the Minister should make a formal determination of the outstanding amount of the residual stranded debt in the near future and make this determination public. Subsequently, the Ontario budget of 2012 included a section on the Residual Stranded Debt - which the DRC was introduced to retire: residual stranded debt is estimated to be $5.8 billion as at March 31, 2011... the residual stranded debt is estimated to be $4.5 billion as at March 31, 2012. Residual stranded debt is estimated to further decline to $3.6 billion as at March 31, 2013 . ...

Proposed Xe-100 pebble-bed nuclear reactor is designed for an abundant target market

A nice summary on this year's recipient of Nobel Prize in Economics, Angus Deaton. The press release on "The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for 2015" To design economic policy that promotes welfare and reduces poverty, we must first understand individual consumption choices. More than anyone else, A ngus Deaton has enhanced this understanding. By linking detailed individual choices and aggregate outcomes, his research has helped transform the fields of microeconomics, macroeconomics, and development economics. The work for which Deaton is now being honored revolves around three central questions: How do consumers distribute their spending among different goods?... How much of society's income is spent and how much is saved?... How do we best measure and analyze welfare and poverty?...   I follow the Knowledge Problem blog which has  nice short article recommending Deaton's accessible work, The Great Escape as well as ...

In the past 6 months the government has gutted the intent of the Electricity Act's financial requirements and now promises to abolish recognizing the value of electricity sector assets in retiring debt claimed to arise from building Ontario's public electricity infrastructure. Background: I covered the development of the current financial structures in Stranded Debt - Abandoned responsibilities , and I covered the illegality of the plan to swap profitable Ontario power for subsidized Toronto transit in  Ontario’s Outlaw Premier Plots to plunder Hydro One The government did, in fact, revise the Electricity Act to facilitate their desires, and they intend on once again changing law to ensure no profits from the sale of Hydro One go to pay down debt allegedly due to Hydro One and other public electricity sector assets.

Bill Gate’s long and tireless efforts to close a deal with China National Nuclear Corp. have finally paid off.  The company has inked a deal to build a first-of-a-kind unit of their sodium cooled fast reactor in China and then manufacture a commercial version of it.Zhimin Qian, President of China National Nuclear Corp. signed the deal with Lee McIntire, CEO of TerraPower at a U.S. Trade and Investment Cooperation Conference held in Seattle on September 22. Source: Terrapower inks deal with China’s CNNC to build fast reactor

Slides showing interesting polling, delivered  to an audience at last week's Ontario Energy Association (OEA) gathering:  Ontario Energy Polling Presentation by Campaign Research (Nick Kouvalis, Principal) Not to focus on the negative, but I was surprised people would be asked if revenues from pricing carbon should be used to subsidize consumption of carbon. 1/3rd of people seemed to think that was exactly what should happen (although separating "gas bills" from "electricity bills" may have added back some sanity):