Cold Air from Wordpress

A short post to debunk some belligerently dishonest claims regarding Ontario's most inane electricity/social science project, Henvey Inlet Wind. Background:  Clement/Thibeault $billion negligence: Henvey Inlet Wind The contract, according to the IESO's contract list, was signed in June 2011 under the feed-in-tariff (FIT) program that paid $135/MWh, plus up to another $15/MWh as an "Aboriginal Price Adder." While those contracts were expected to be operational 3-years after the project data, apparently this one is exceptional in ways other than costing $150/MWh (roughly 5 times what new 2019 wind in Alberta will cost). Here are the claims I'll rebuke (emphasis added): Development of wind energy will help Ontario in meeting its goal of phasing out coal-fired power generation . The windfarm is expected to displace 851,000t of carbon dioxide emissions a year, which is equivalent to the amount of carbon dioxide released by 200,000 cars. It will also offset 4,100t of s...

Ontario's electricity system operator (IESO) made a mistake in June. In July they made it better for themselves in a way that specifically punished one set of consumers - Class B ones not covered by Regulated Price Plans (RPP). The OEB's lacklustre oversight in recent years continues to harm this same set of consumers. This will be a wonkish post but if you're connected with a company with a substantial electricity bill, it will alert you to probable overcharges. This situation should be difficult to explain, because I've had friends questioning the IESO on it for half a year and I haven't seen any evidence that a fulsome explanation is pending. That may be due to the beginning of the tale. The beginning was the final global adjustment calculations the IESO made for June 2017. They erred in calculating total consumption. The inability of the organization to admit that, along with the regulator's (OEB) disinterest in monitoring the IESO's collection of global...

My friend Parker Gallant has written on my updated estimates of annual curtailment in  Wind waste should worry Ontario ratepayers.   Producing the estimates doesn't take me nearly the effort Parker puts into writing on them, so I felt compelled to add a new view of the data just to make our contributions a little more equitable. The French language Radio-Canada has posted  AU PAYS DE L'EAU NOIRE Des résidents en Ontario vivent un cauchemar depuis l’installation d’éoliennes proches de leur domicile.  I assume it's best read in French, but the Google translation to English sufficed for me. As the journalism at Radio-Canada is more focused on the impacts to people of turbine construction of the North Kent wind farm, I decided today's show of data will be on the performance of individual industrial wind turbine facilities. Capacity Factor is the output of a generator divided by the theoretical maximum (full output in all hours). To estimate costs I need to estimate curtailm...

I used to have a writing process where if something annoyed me I'd write on it quickly, and then edit out all the anger. I generally figure readers shouldn't have to deal with my anger - but it's time for some  Networking . "...I'm not going to leave you alone. I want you to get mad. ... all's I know is you've got to get mad" You've been forewarned.   The need to rant really started a while ago with reading a  "Message from Peter Gregg " - the big DOWG at Ontario's electricity system operator A tournament, a tournament, A tournament of lies.  - R.E.M. Before moving to bigger disappointments I'll start with the politicians. Yesterday the Ontario Progressive Conservatives announced they'll cut Ontario electricity rates by 12%. I was already mad when I read that, and I think it actually nudged me a little away from anger towards resignation. Tom Adams concluded a piece on the Conservative guarantee with: There is no reason to ex...

The Globe and Mail published an article by its Ontario legislative reporter Justin Giovannetti,  In Ontario, hydro’s future gets murkier as costs of leaving the grid decline.  The article posits, " a future where Ontarians produce their own power and cut the cord to the wider grid appears to be approaching." It's a very bizarre assortment of factoids that supports the proposition. Often stories are planted. I mean no disrespect to Mr. Giovannitti when I say this little fact is planted by somebody promoting a story: ...Feb. 18 could be seen as the start of the province's electrical transformation. On that Saturday, with the sun blazing and a strong wind powering turbines, demand for electricity from the province's traditional generating stations was actually lower in the busy middle of the day than it had been when most people were sleeping hours earlier. That is a possible description of what happened that February Saturday. It was the first day since 2003's b...

A spreadsheet I regularly update with data on industrial wind turbine (IWT) generation in Ontario is cited in Parker Gallant's recent,  Wind: worst value for Ontario consumers . The same post cites the Canadian Wind Energy Association (CanWEA) commentary on Ontario's recently released Long Term-Energy Plan 2017, which included: New wind energy provides the best value for consumers to meet growing demand for affordable non-emitting electricity. Let's examine the "value" as electricity - as there is no market in Ontario for any subset of that commodity, including "affordable non-emitting". Two definitions of "value" from the Oxford dictionary are pertinent: "The regard that something is held to deserve; the importance, worth, or usefulness of something." "The worth of something compared to the price paid or asked for it." By the first definition wind is clearly the least valued generation type in Ontario. Using only very ...

Yesterday Statistics Canada's daily news included  Electricity supply and disposition, 2016.  Geoff Zochodne, a reporter at the National Post, gleaned this message from the release: "Ontario exported more power to the U.S. last year than it has in a decade, and at a relatively low value." This initiated some e-mailing, which drew me into the data quagmire again, but also reflecting on my history reporting on exports. Instead of putting my thoughts into private e-mails, I thought I'd make them the content of this public blog post. I'll return to the newly posted Statistics Canada data later, but for now I'll declare my bias as printed in the Financial Post early in 2016: "...StatsCan data is awful. It can’t be the basis for anything." The recent release has mostly meaningful data, but some big errors mean it's far from the best data to serve in analyzing Ontario's exports - or anything else. Some background on my involvement reporting on expo...