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Tag Archives: Ontario power exports

Ontario’s cheap power exports make us everybody’s friend

12 Thursday Nov 2015

Posted by ottawawindconcerns in Renewable energy, Wind power

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

hydro bills Ontario, Ontario, Ontario economy, Ontario electricity bills, Ontario job losses, Ontario power exports, Parker Gallant

New York State using cheap Ontario power to lure business stateside

Buffalo NY: keeping the lights on and luring business thanks to cheap power from Ontario (Photo: The Herd Report)
Buffalo NY: keeping the lights on and luring business thanks to cheap power from Ontario (Photo: The Herd Report)

Buffalo’s Pal: Ontario’s ratepayers

(Re-posted from Wind Concerns Ontario http://www.windconcernsontario.ca )

The September 2015 summary report from IESO demonstrates that once again, Ontario ratepayers picked up additional costs for exporting surplus power. The September results, gleaned from examination of the “monthly summary” indicates it cost $100 million to subsidize Ontario-generated electricity exports to New York, Michigan, etc., in September.

That totals $1.5 billion for the first nine months of 2015. The 16.2 terawatts exported in those nine months could have supplied power to 1.7 million average Ontario households for the full year.

What’s really annoying is finding out that our neighbours in Buffalo are engaged in an industry attraction effort that is meeting with some success. A recent article about the NY government subsidized building ($750 million) of SolarCity’s “gigafactory” in Buffalo to manufacture solar panels indicates they are on the comeback trail and attracting investments.  One of the reasons is because they are able to offer a “huge benefit: the electricity rate for manufacturers averages just 4.79 cents per kilowatt-hour, which is possible because of cheap hydroelectric power generated from Niagara Falls.”

Because some of our power generated from Niagara Falls1. and other sources in September was sold as surplus power for just 3.19 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh), we’re actually helping Buffalo offer those attractive electricity rates.

This fact should remind all Ontarians of the promises made to us by the Ontario Liberal government when it enacted Bill 150, the Green Energy and Green Economy Act (GEA).  The April 8, 2009 Standing Committee on General Government transcript on Bill 150, with the then Ontario Energy Minister George Smitherman on the stand, elicited this response to a question posed about the effects of the GEA on electricity prices:

“We anticipate about 1% per year of additional rate increase associated with the bill’s implementation over the next 15 years. Our estimate of cost increases is based upon the way that we actually amortize costs in the energy sector.”

Let’s look back to September 2009, the year the Legislature passed the GEA, when Ontario demand for electricity was 10,932,000 megawatt hours (MWh) and compare to September 2015 when Ontario demand was slightly higher (+3.8%), reaching 11,362,000 MWh. IESO’s monthly summary for September 2009 indicates the “average weighted cost” (all-in) to consumers was $82.73/MWh whereas the “average weighted cost” for September 2015 was $125.35/MWh.

That translates to an increase of $42.62/MWh or 4.26 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh), and cost ratepayers $453 million extra for just one month.  Looking at this in a slightly different way, the extra MWh we consumed for September 2015 versus 2009 came at a cost of $1,196 each or $11.96 per kWh, had generation and delivery costs remained the same through those six years.

It is clear costs to ratepayers have already become a multiple of the Smitherman promise … and we still have nine years left in his forecast.

The Auditor General pointed out the Energy Ministry failed to complete a cost/benefit study before implementing the GEA. There was never any acknowledgement or accounting for the intermittent nature of renewable energy, the fact power is produced when it’s not needed, and the need for renewables to be backed up with other generation (along with transmission line costs to bring it to where it’s needed) was apparently never considered.

And now, in spite of the evidence of the past six years, the march continues to add more wind and solar to the Ontario grid, which means Buffalo and other jurisdictions will reap the rewards.

As Buffalo adds manufacturing jobs, Ontario is shedding them. Ontario’s electricity ratepayers are wondering, what will the next nine years bring?

© Parker Gallant, November 10, 2015

1.  Thanks to Scott Luft for his analysis on the Niagara Falls waste.

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Ontario’s $16-million Christmas power giveaway

31 Wednesday Dec 2014

Posted by ottawawindconcerns in Renewable energy, Wind power

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Bob Chiarelli, Dale Goldhawk, electricity bills, hydro bills Ontario, Ontario, Ontario economy, Ontario power exports, Ontario surplus power, Parker Gallant, Wind Concerns Ontario, wind power

Ontario’s $16-million Christmas power giveaway

Wind power half of surplus power sold off cheap

Ontario's energy policy: gifts for somebody---just not you

Christmas was great day for Michigan and New York, courtesy of Santa Claus Ontario and wind power: Ontario exported 16.5 % (about 66,000 MWh) of our total demand for power on Christmas Day, and those two neighbours got $500,000 in cash along with the 56,000 MWh of power we gave them.  Power generated from wind energy was 36,000 MWh or 51% of total exports—if the curtailed wind production was included that would be 77% of the surplus power exported, so the wind power developers must be happy with their Christmas presents from Ontario, too.

In fact, Ontario’s electricity ratepayers picked up the cost of the cash payments to Michigan and New York, along with the actual cost of the production which was $7 million.  And, we paid about $2 million for “curtailed” wind (17,000 MWh), close to $3 million for “steamed off” nuclear (49,000 MWh) and more than $3 million to the gas plant generators for their “net revenue requirement” while the gas power plants idled.  That’s $16 million… and it doesn’t include the cost of Christmas Day “hydro spillage” as the Independent Electricity Systems Operator or IESO doesn’t report on it.

Total demand for power in Ontario Christmas Day was only 325,000 MWh, perhaps due to mild weather or maybe everyone barbecued their turkeys.  The hourly Ontario energy price (HOEP) value of the total demand of 390,000 MWh was negative (-$2,900,000) based on the average negative price of $7.45/MWh, but Ontario ratepayers still paid the $40 million needed to produce that power.

So our Premier and her chief Elf in the Energy portfolio, Bob Chiarelli, rewarded Ontario’s ratepayers with lumps of coal on Christmas day while doling out goodies to our neighbours!

©Parker Gallant

December 26, 2014

Contact Wind Concerns Ontario at 1-855-517-0446 or

windconcerns@gmail.com

Reprinted from Wind Concerns Ontario

You may also listen to a 45-minute podcast of Parker Gallant on the Dale Goldhawk radio show here.

National Post: Ontario taxpayers don’t benefit from power exports

10 Friday Jan 2014

Posted by ottawawindconcerns in Wind power

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Bob Chiarelli, Green Energy Act, Ontario power exports

Energy Minister Bob Chiarelli likes to crow about how much money Ontario is making when it sells its surplus power. The truth is something far different, even in Mr Chiarelli’s millions-equal-Tim-Hortons-coffees world of mathematics.

Scott Stinson: Ontario powers up electricity exports but taxpayers see little benefit

Republish Reprint

Scott Stinson | January 9, 2014 6:58 PM ET
More from Scott Stinson | @scott_stinson

Jurisdictions that import electricity from Ontario pay close to the wholesale market price but consumers in the province pay much more.

Tyler Anderson/National Post
Jurisdictions that import electricity from Ontario pay close to the wholesale market price but consumers in the province pay much more.

At a time when Ontario has seen its manufacturing industry crater, the province has found that it can still do a booming business with one type of export: electricity.

Unfortunately for ratepayers, the business model is a little unsound. If energy were doughnuts, Ontario would still be expanding its dough supply, while sending ever more trucks full of discounted day-olds to places like Michigan, Minnesota and Quebec.

The province’s Independent Electricity System Operator on Wednesday released its year-in-review of the province’s energy data. Most of the numbers were as expected, with wind energy an increasing part of the supply mix, coal a decreasing part of it and nuclear energy remaining the backbone of the grid.

Energy exports, meanwhile, “rose to 18.3 TWh,” which is an awful lot of electricity: enough to power 300 billion 60-watt bulbs for an hour. The province’s exports have been on a steady upward trend; the 2013 total is a notable jump from 14.6 TWh in 2012 and from 12.9 TWh in 2011, according to figures released by the IESO last year. Exports have increased by almost 50% over that two-year period.

This would be a welcome development if the province and its ratepayers — which is to say, you — received a return for our electricity that was equal to, or ideally above, the amount that was paid to produce it.

But it does not. Jurisdictions that import electricity from Ontario pay something close to the wholesale market price of electricity, a number that changes hour by hour and is dependent on factors too numerous to list here. For 2013 the average wholesale price was between 2.5¢/kWh and 3¢/kWh. The cost paid to produce that electricity, again using the IESO’s own numbers, is on average about 8.5¢/kWh, or about four times the wholesale price.

Consumers pay, again depending on a host of factors, something much closer to the larger number, because built into the cost of our electricity is everything from capital investment to executive salaries to the payout for when gas plants are cancelled in the middle of election campaigns.

This trend, where Ontario ships excess electricity to its neighbours at steep discounts, is not new. In 2011, the province’s Auditor-General noted in a report that “the price Ontarians pay for electricity and the price it charges its export customers … have in recent years been moving in opposite directions.”

Read the full story here.

Another month, another $162 million. Thanks, Bob.

19 Thursday Dec 2013

Posted by ottawawindconcerns in Renewable energy, Wind power

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Bob Chiarelli, Ontario power exports, Parker Gallant, rising Ontario electricity bills, Tom Adams

 

 

 chiarelli1.jpg.size.xxlarge.promo
I don’t need a calculator, I can do it all in my head.

 

Another month, another $162 million hit to Ontario’s ratepayers

 

The Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) posted its November Market Summary on December 18 but so far, Energy Minister Chiarelli hasn’t claimed a profit.  He did just that on TVOntario’s The Agenda with Steve Paikin earlier this month, when he claimed Ontario generated a $6 billion profit on exporting electricity.

 

A look through the IESO market summary shows that Ontario exported an average of 2,243 megawatts (MW) each and every hour of November—that means a total of 1,614,960 MWh left Ontario destined for New York, Michigan and Quebec.  The average hourly energy price during the month was a paltry $14.93 per MW (or 1.5 cents per kWh), meaning revenue generated from those exports contributed just over $24 million to production and ancillary costs.

 

The average cost to Ontario ratepayers is also revealed in the market summary; that was considerably more, at $115.26 per MWh (or 11.5 cents per kWh). In other words, Ontario’s loss on the exported power was $162 million for the month.

 

It is obvious that much of the wind power generated throughout

November wound up either exported or

caused other generation to be exported or wasted

 

What that means to every one of the 4.9 million ratepayers in Ontario is a payment of an average of $33.00 each to subsidize those exports for November.  The exact role wind and solar played in those exports is not disclosed in the market summary, but wind production during November was high and totaled 721,000 MWh or 1,000 MW per hour.  The cost of that power production to the ratepayers is estimated to be almost $100 million, without including the costs of the gas plants backing wind up, spilled hydro, or steamed off nuclear at Bruce Power.  It is obvious that much of the wind power generated throughout November wound up either exported or caused other generation to be exported or wasted.

 

The total amount picked up by the average ratepayer in Ontario to support those exports so far in 2013 is approximately $280.00 each.   In announcing the new Long term Energy Plan, Energy Minister Bob Chiarelli’s forecast a rate increase of 42% increase over the next five years—it looks like that may come true much sooner than he forecast.

 

It is time to pull the plug on the 3,700 MW of uninstalled but contracted wind and the 1,400 MW of solar before the cost to subsidize electricity exports is more than the average ratepayer’s electricity bill!

 

The $6-billion dollar man, as energy analyst Tom Adams calls Minister Chiarelli, should seriously consider taking a math lesson or two before embarking on any more forecasts.

 

©Parker Gallant,

December 18, 2013

The opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent Wind Concerns Ontario policy.

Tom Adams on CBC: podcast

27 Wednesday Nov 2013

Posted by ottawawindconcerns in Ottawa, Renewable energy, Wind power

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

CBC Ontario Today, energy poverty Ontario, Ontario power exports, Ontario's rising electricity bills, Tom Adams

Missed the noon-hour broadcast of Ontario Today with Tom Adams? Listen here.

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