WIND CONCERNS ONTARIO

“Provincial benefit”: is this another one of Premier Wynne’s “stretch goals”?

Parker Gallant maps power price increases under the Ontario Liberal government
Back in February 2011, IESO announced in their publication the Electricity Insider that a line item on some electricity bills would be changed.  The message was: “For all consumers that pay for electricity on market prices or who have signed a retail contract, the line item Provincial Benefit on your electricity bill will be renamed Global Adjustment starting in 2011.” 
 For those who relied on their local distribution company to bill them, the term “Provincial Benefit” or “Global Adjustment” never appeared on their bill. It was hidden in the “electricity” line! 
Presumably as a result of the change someone at IESO went back to 2007 and changed all the monthly summary reports to read Global Adjustment rather than “Provincial Benefit”. Since then the term Global Adjustment has gained a certain infamy, commencing with the 2011 Auditor General’s report, the December 9, 2014 report and again in the December 2, 2015 report.
In 2007, the first year the GA term first appears in IESO’s annual consumption reports, one notes Ontario’s consumption was 152 terawatts (TWh). The GA was $3.95 per MWh and the HOEP (Hourly Ontario Energy Price) or market price was $50.51 bringing the average cost for the raw commodity; electricity, to $54.46/MWh or 5.4 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) for the year.  That means the cost of the raw electricity consumed was about  (152 TWh X $54,460,000/TWh = $8.27 billion) $8.3 billion.  Another $300 million was required to cover the cost of 5.1 TWh of imports and  12.3 TWh of exports (5.1 TWh X $50.51 million/TWh + 12.3 TWh X $3.95million/TWh = $$306 million) making the all-in costs of the commodity $8.6 billion.

Electricity used to be cheap

What that means is, even though the Liberal government had been in power for four years, the price of generating electricity was relatively cheap, increasing at a rate of about 3% annually from $47.82/MWh in 2003 to $54.46/MWh in 2007. While the increase came in higher than inflation, ratepayers were told repairing the system because of its reputed neglect under the previous government was the reason.
Fast forward to 2015 and see what the next eight years under the Liberal government brought ratepayers for the raw commodity’s cost, in comparison to the first four years.