Ontario electricity customers pick up the tab for unneeded power development, again $1.5 million paid out already today for curtailed wind power The huge, 100-megawatt North Kent 1 wind power project proposed by…
Galloping Global Adjustment As noted in the previous posting, over the past eight years (2007 to 2015) Ontario electricity ratepayers have seen the charge for the basic commodity increase by $6 billion dollars…
First Nation has not endorsed proposed wind power project in Dutton Dunwich Simcoe Reformer, January 26, 2016 The Municipality of Dutton-Dunwich is campaigning against the Wynne government’s plan this year to invite applications…
“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.
January 23, 2016 This “Op-Ed” appears in the current edition of Ontario Farmer. It is not available online. Good money after bad: how mismanagement of Ontario’s power system affects you By Parker Gallant…
What follows is an excerpt of a letter sent by Parker Gallant to Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne. We present this because of the role of wind power generation in causing Ontario’s electricity bills…
Dutton Dunwich, Ontario, January 14, 2016— Dutton Dunwich Council passed a resolution at its regular meeting January 13, requesting that the Ontario government not sign any new contracts for wind power, and that…
Ontario’s electricity “Powerball” giveaway It’s official! The cost of exporting Ontario’s surplus electricity paid for by electricity ratepayers actually exceeded the prize up for grabs in the U.S.-based “Powerball” lottery. In this case,…
The Canadian Wind Energy Association (CanWEA) had this greeting on their website over the holidays: “The industry reached a milestone of over 10,000 megawatts of installed capacity this year, and during the holiday…
Here is a blog posting by energy analyst Scott Luft, based on the past week’s edition of Ontario public broadcaster TVOntario‘s The Agenda, which dealt with the Auditor General’s report on how the…
Curtailment of industrial wind power production in Ontario soars in 2015 Posted on January 5, 2016 by Cold Air A 2015 year-end review of my hourly estimates indicate the curtailment of output from industrial wind turbines…