Posts

Mitigating Ontario Electricity Costs – The Long-Ago Missed Solar Opportunity

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This is a post written by Bruce Sharp. An earlier version appeared on Linkedin. Well, the (subsidized, one would suppose) L.E.D. light bulb finally went on at Queen’s Park last week concerning electricity costs. Kathleen Wynne says high cost of hydro is concern across province | CBC Did a single by-election loss cause this awakening? In this day of politicians seemingly and completely incapable of climbing down from heavily entrenched positions, this seems to represent at least some progress – admitting there’s a problem.   Upon hearing this news, my mind went to what the government would do to provide relief – the depth, breadth and source of funds. Since 2003, we’ve had a number of dubious band-aid solutions, including a retroactive price freeze, the Ontario Clean Energy Benefit, an end to the Debt Retirement Charge (for residential consumers) and the Ontario Electricity Support Payment. What would be next? We now know it’ll be a removal of the 8% provincial sales tax -- for thos...

Tom Adams' Open Letter to Dr. Dianne Saxe, Environmental Commissioner of Ontario

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  Tom Adams has a very good post following a discussion on Zoomer radio with the current Environmental Commissioner of Ontario. Dr. Dianne Saxe Environmental Commissioner... On Wednesday last week, you and I were guests on the radio show “Fight Back with Libby Znaimer” on the AM radio station CFZM Toronto. A podcast of that interview is available here . You made the following six major points: Climate change means that Ontario has much higher temperatures and longer heat waves. Ontario’s infrastructure was built for the climate that we used to have but unfortunately that is over and won’t come back…If we look at the data, there is a very significant difference that we’re seeing in the last couple of decades from the average temperature of the 20th century, which is what most of our infrastructure was built to. If you look at what is driving Ontario rates up, conservation contributed only 4% of Global Adjustment in 2015. Residential rates in Ontario are average for North Ameri...

Intermittent Renewables Can't Favorably Transform Grid Electricity

If you've never read Gail Tverberg, this would be a good place to start.

a poor Connecticut: Ontario Electricity Pricing

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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...

Clement/Thibeault $billion negligence: Henvey Inlet Wind

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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...

Ontario Energy Board points to $1.35 billion solar costs hidden by IESO

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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?

Wynne's wind 88% waste

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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...