Cold Air from Wordpress

I found myself in front of some U.S. Energy Information Administration data today, and, as anybody would, thought that with a little summarizing and some formatting it might make for a pretty enthralling scatter plot. How right I was! I looked up the data after seeing some comments on a recent article by Parker Gallant ( And the winner is : Hydro One! Most expensive residential power rates in North America ). I know I paid about 20 cents/kWh in 2015 (up to ~23 in 2016), so I wanted to check U.S. EIA data to see how that compared - and when I want to check data, I want to check base data. This I found in the form EIA-826 data for Sales and revenue . The data is by utility and state, and it includes revenues, sales and the count for consumer groups - including residential. Forgetting Ontario temporarily, I summarized data by state and created the posted scatter plot to test for a connection between consumption, and pricing. It seems to exist and that seems pertinent beyond a rant - as we...

Five years one-hundred and fifty-three days ago the Ontario Power Authority offered a feed-in tariff (FIT) power contract to Nigig Power Corporation for a 300 megawatt capacity industrial wind facility. The project now is referred to as the Henvey Inlet Wind Project. At the time the contract period was 3 years and the World Trade Organization was yet to rule against provincial sourcing of material. The project was kept alive by, as much as anyone, faux conservative Tony Clement. A known proponent of wasteful spending within his riding, Clement announced a $3 million gift to advance the project last July - at about the time the project absolutely positively should have been cancelled due to 4 years of absolutely no progress despite an expected in service data of 2014: "Our Government continues to make strategic community investments designed to enhance the participation of Aboriginal peoples in their local economies. This project will stand for many years to come as a source of g...

The Ontario Energy Board (OEB) has finally released  Ontario’s System-Wide Electricity Supply Mix: 2015 Data . Previous years' versions of this reporting have been almost unique in providing an indication of the costs of embedded generation. Although the OEB supply mix data shows only percentages by supply types, assuming all nuclear is grid-connected (Tx, or direct) generation, it's reasonable to use the annual nuclear generation reported by the IESO (including curtailed nuclear) to calculate estimated generation from each source - and having done that to estimate the cost of the generation not reported by the IESO using estimated unit costs from Table 2 of the most recent OEB Regulated Price Plan supply cost documentation .   There's $1.35 billion in hidden solar costs here! Why is the IESO contracting more solar when the can't provide any accounting on what they've already contracted?

Today column is on the Premier of Ontario's negligence. I’m on CPP disability as I’m in remission from cancer. In the winter we use our wood burning stove because we shut our breakers off as we have baseboard heaters. Next week we’ll pay our bill and buy maybe $50 worth of food to hopefully survive. - Andre Richards, Sutton Three of my previous four posts at my Cold Air blog dealt with difficult topics that included capacity factor and capacity value/credit.  The fourth post discussed statistics for the first half of the year. This post uses a small set of IESO statistics and first half-year generation with industrial wind turbines to display the economic damage of a collapse in value of incremental wind turbines. Most data for this post is directly from Ontario's system operator (IESO) 1 . The one small change to the data is I've omitted records for facilities prior to the first day an hour produced at 85% of nameplate capacity. This chart illustrates the changes between...

Ontario's Pravda is reporting the head of the province has written, in introducing "the plan": “When my grandchildren ask me what we did to help our planet I want to be proud of what we accomplished.” When that child asks me I'll be able to say I had a house powered solely on electricity, got me a NEST thermostat, between my wife and I planted hundreds of trees (not evenly divided), we cleaned up the ash bore damage and supplemented electric heat with a high efficiency wood stove, and at times we even grew our own carrots - and then I just might turn around, drop trou and let the sun shine out of my ass. Should I have my own grandchildren, that won't likely be my response - particularly as if they ask this question they'll probably notice the gas stove, and barbeque... And furnace. What's in the plan  that makes it the thing wherein Kathleen will catch the conscience of the king grandchild?

Important article re: Ontario's poorly chosen cap-and-trade partner, and the elusive carbon revenue stream

An anticipated Health Canada study on Industrial Wind Turbine Noise is noted by anti-victim wind promoter Simon Chapman in a new article in Australia. Chapman opines there are no problems with industrial wind turbines except for the problems with the whiny sorts that pretend to be bothered by them: "In this Health Canada study, while proximity to the turbines was statistically significantly associated with annoyance, the relationship was weak. It was better explained by factors such as holding negative views about the visual impact of the turbines (not liking the look of them), being able to the see aircraft warning blinking lights, the perception of vibrations when the turbines were turning and high concern about physical safety. These are all perceptual variables that bothered some..." but also... "The prevalence of residents reporting that they were very or extremely annoyed by wind turbine noise increased from 2.1% to 13.7% when sound pressure levels were below 30 dB...