Tag Archives: Ottawa Hydro

Local Area Advisory Committee to meet January 12 on regional electricity

07 Thursday Jan 2016

Posted by in Ottawa, Renewable energy

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Meeting open to the public on options to meet electricity demand

INDEPENDENT ELECTRICITY SYSTEM OPERATOR (IESO)

You are invited to attend the third meeting of the Greater Ottawa Area Local Advisory Committee (LAC) being held on January 12. The LAC will help shape a plan to meet Ottawa’s longer-term electricity needs, including options to meet electricity demand growth in the broader West Ottawa area. The Greater Ottawa LAC will provide advice and recommendations on local priorities, and will help to identify ways to engage the broader community in the long-term discussion.

LAC meetings are open to the public, and the details of the Ottawa meeting are as follows:

Date:  Tuesday, January 12, 2016
Time:  5:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.
Location:  Hotel Indigo – Indigo Room, 123 Metcalfe Street, Ottawa, ON

On April 28, a 20-year Integrated Regional Resource Plan (IRRP) was released for the Central Ottawa Area. Developed by Hydro Ottawa, Hydro One Networks and the Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO), the plan identifies the electricity needs of the Ottawa area, and is designed to support community growth through a range of solutions and ensure that electricity is available when needed. The planning process puts Conservation First, and seeks the most cost-effective and sustainable options for the community.

As part of the overall regional planning process, a Regional Infrastructure Plan (RIP), focusing on the transmission and distribution components of the plan, was developed for the Greater Ottawa Region. This effort was led by Hydro One and the RIP Report was posted to the Hydro One website on December 3, 2015. The RIP phase involves confirmation of previously identified needs and a more detailed development of the “wires” plan to address the needs where a wires solution would be the best overall approach. View the RIP report online.

For information about the LAC meeting, the plan, materials from previous LAC meetings or to view an archive of the informational webinar about the plan, visit www.ieso.ca/GreaterOttawa.

We look forward to working together to plan for your future electricity needs, and hope to see you at the  LAC meeting.

Independent Electricity System Operator

Ottawa Hydro rates up: what’s the rest of the story? Subsidies…

10 Thursday Jan 2013

Posted by in Ottawa, Renewable energy, Wind power

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In today’s Ottawa Citizen, a report from Don Butler on the rise in rates for power from Ottawa Hydro. Here’s a comment from someone whose opinion we regard highly, Robert Lyman, former Director-General, Environmental Affairs, with Transport Canada.

The Citizen story is here: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/technology/Modest+Hydro+Ottawa+increase+masks+steep+rise+electricity+rates/7797528/story.html

With his permission, we post Bob Lyman’s comment here:

It tells only a small part of the story, of course. The focus of the article was on the effects of time-of-use rates as compared to delivery charges, with just a passing reference to the taxpayer subsidy that will expire in a few years. The other way of presenting the increases is in terms of the average costs of electrical energy minus the delivery (transmission and distribution) charges. Those increased 85 % from 2005 to 2011 and were projected by Ontario Power Generation to increase another 46% from 2012 to 2015. There are good reasons to believe that the 46% figure is an under-estimate.
More important, the article did not explain why costs are increasing so much, when demand is falling. The answer lies in much higher costs now being paid for new generation sources like wind and solar and the expensive energy “conservation” programs. The effects of these costs are just beginning to be felt. As industrial wind turbines become a much larger share of generation in future, the cost increases will accelerate.
Add to this the costs of implementing the “smart meters” program, which is probably in the range of $2 billion province-wide for the meters and local distribution costs alone, and the huge costs of expanding the transmission system to pick up all the disparate source of electricity generation from wind, and you have an electrical system headed for major rate increases for the foreseeable future.
We as taxpayers are providing a huge subsidy so that we as ratepayers will be lulled into thinking that the electrical energy system is all right. Unfortunately it isn’t.

 

We would add to this a repetition of the results of a Library of Parliament analysis of the wind power project planned for the south-west rural area of Ottawa, as requested by Nepean-Carleton MP Pierre Poilievre. The research found that the subsidy for this particular project would be on the order of $4.8 MILLION per year.

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