October 16, 2017

October 15, 2017 was quite a windy Sunday.   Being a mild fall day too, that meant Ontario’s demand for electricity was low according to the IESO’s Daily Market Summary.  Total Ontario demand was only 313,000 MWh for the whole day.
Unfortunately for ratepayers, it was a beyond the norm windy day — industrial wind turbines spread throughout the province were spinning well beyond their yearly average of 29/30% of capacity.
According to the IESO’s daily generator report, the wind turbines could have supplied almost 84,000 MWh^* of power, or about 27% of all the power consumed by Ontario’s ratepayers (approximately 83% of their capacity).  As it turned out, IESO curtailed or did not accept 42,500 MWh for which wind developers were paid $120/MWh anyway, and the 41,200 MWh grid-accepted power generation got them the standard $135/MWh.
What the foregoing means is wind developers were paid approximately $10,660,000 for curtailed wind generation and grid-accepted power.  That works out to a cost per MWh of $260 or 26 cents a kilowatt hour — almost double the current generation cost, for which 25% is being refinanced under the Fair Hydro Act.
As it turned out, the grid-accepted wind generation really wasn’t needed: as the IESO “Summary” report indicates, Ontario’s net exports averaged 2,110MW per hour or 50,640 MW at a negative price of $0.99. That means Ontario’s ratepayers picked up another $50K to provide our neighbours (principally Michigan and New York) with cheap power.
No doubt Ontario was also spilling hydro and steaming off Bruce Nuclear which ratepayers were also paying for on that windy October Sunday.
More proof that wind power provides costly, intermittent and unneeded power. More proof that the Green Energy and Economy Act should be tossed out!
 
 
*All numbers are rounded.