August 4, 2026
All last week Wind Concerns Ontario posted wind power generation stats almost daily, to demonstrate that wind was not showing up for Ontario during peak demand periods.
One day, generation was as low as 55 megawatts one hour—for the entire province!
Now Parker Gallant has looked back at nine days which includes some windy days but others when wind simply went to the beach, while nuclear, hydro and natural gas stepped up to meet demand.
Parker published the statistics today on his blog Energy Perspectives, and it serves to demonstrate again that wind power is not reliable, not affordable and certainly not the answer to meeting Ontario’s electricity needs. Moreover, with more proposals coming (two already one in Minto Township, the other in the Township of Wellesley. Last year’s unsuccessful proposals may rise again, including at least one near Sault Ste Marie, and two in Chatham-Kent. Track current proposals on our page here.)
NO municipality should be told they must accept the negative impacts of industrial wind power because Ontario needs power: it is simply not true.
An except from Parker Gallant today:
Those IWT over those nine July days generated a total of 176,913 MWh which collectively amounted to 16.7% of their capacity and much less than they generate during the Spring and Fall months of the year when demand is much lower! The question therefore is: “did we Ontarians actually need that 9 days of their generation?”
Collectively the four sources of “renewable” power generated approximately 243,000 MWh at a total cost of over $58 million over the nine days.
Net Exports over the nine (9) days:
As noted above our other renewables were also generating power over the nine days with biomass generation totalling 7,328 MWh, solar 24,814 MWh, and BESS (battery storage) 33,833 MWh collectively increasing “renewable” generation to 242,891 MWh!
At first glance the foregoing looks impressive, but we didn’t need any of that generation as IESO were busy selling it all off. Over the nine days, Quebec, New York and Michigan, principally, were scooping up cheap power we Ontario ratepayers and taxpayers paid for as IESO reported intertie sales totaled 487,306 MWh! There was one day (July 29th) when just the generation of those IWT was 74,856 MWh and slightly higher than net exports which reached 71,189 MWh! Try to imagine how often that happens in the Spring and Fall when those IWT frequently generate over 60% of their rated capacity! A quick look at the DAZP (day ahead zonal price) suggested IESO were paid an average of about $50/MWh meaning for just the cost of those exports on the 29th of July it hit us Ontario ratepayers/taxpayers for over $6 million!
As noted, IESO reported net exports over those nine days totaled just over 487,000 MWh so if all of those above renewables of 242,891 MWh were all part of those net exports and IESO only earned $50/MWh that would have reduced their $58 million in costs to us Ontarians by about $12.1 million meaning we only got nailed for $45.9 million or just over $6 million per day!
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