Cold Air from Wordpress

Today the government of Canada approved a pipeline, which some see as contrasting with it declaring a climate emergency yesterday. To assuage the concern the government has promised to do blindingly good things with profits from the pipeline, including promising "every dollar the federal government earns from this project will be invested in Canada’s clean energy transition," and launching, "the next phase of engagement with Indigenous groups on ways they could share in the benefits of the expansion, including through equity ownership or revenue sharing." When the Prime Minister was elected he brought two veterans of Ontario's Liberal government to Ottawa as his top advisors, so this seems an opportune time to examine one "clean energy" initiative geared to invest in Aboriginal communities. The $2.6 billion expansion on hydroelectric generating stations on the Lower Mattagami river. Ontario's nominally public generator says of a hydro project comp...

I saw an opportunity for presenting Ontario electricity data in trying out the free public version of the Tab|eau business intelligence tool. I'm not sure I have the patience, or the smarts, to learn how to do all I've learned with Microsoft's Power BI, but maybe I should. I'm astonished with the power of this map in filtering the data table! (afraid the attempt at embedding on wordpress was a failure - but the link works!)   https://public.tableau.com/views/MonthlyGeneration/Story1?:embed=y&:display_count=yes

A quick post with commentary on a graphic. I've been writing little but learning more recently. I've written multiple times on the inability of Ontario to fully utilize its water rights on the Niagara river, so that's some data that I looked to learn some new data connections and summary techniques. Having advanced to where I can easily update to the latest available data I thought I'd share this view summarizing it - and offer some brief comments explaining the significance.

Ontario's Industrial Conservation Initiative program, which rewards large "Class A" consumers for lower consumption during periods of high demand from the system operator's supplier, cost others $1.27 billion in past 12 months. I won't review the history of the program today as I did 3 years ago in  "Stakeholders" destroying the viability of Ontario's electricity market , but I will note that since last March a Variance Account under the [un]Fair Hydro Plan - which shifts costs from ratepayers today to rubes sometime in the future - a debt of $1.2 billion accumulated with April's total still to be posted. Today the system operator (IESO)  posted the top 5 peak hours for the adjustment period that ended April 30th, 2018 (it started May 1, 2017) - and Monday the IESO posted the final Global Adjustment figures for April. This post will contain: a quick demonstration of cost shift calculations, review of the ICI value proposition, and another ...

Electricity prices, and costs are aspects of a project I'm trudging through working with electricity data from the United States. I've developed a Power BI report which probably deserves a lot slicker interface, but time is limited. This post offers directions on controlling the reporting, and adds some Ontario context to the graphics. My primary intent was to create imagery of average monthly electricity cost, by state, for residential consumers. Rates get a lot of discussion, even more so in recent weeks, but I'm not convinced an isolated rate analysis is useful. A recent Scientific American article featured a smart BI report by Abhilash Kantamneni (  @akantamn  on Twitter ). Due to an exchange on Twitter I'd had with Abhilash a couple of weeks ago, I wanted to build a view that showed both rates, and average monthly consumer costs - because it turns out these are much different things.

Yesterday Ontario Power Generation released their 2017 Financial Results : Ontario Power Generation Inc. (OPG or Company) today reported net income attributable to the Shareholder of $860 million for 2017, compared to $436 million in 2016. That must be considered a great number in the context of the income history at OPG as it's the highest they've ever accomplished. The apparently excellent results may leave some wondering what critics commenting on the sector have been braying on about. I, a critic, have reviewed the results and found some things to bray about.

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...