The Wynne government is selling off surplus power at bargain rates … and yet, has contracted for more power produced out-of-phase with demand. Time to reverse engines.
November 14, 2016
Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) has responsibility for running the “market” referred to as the HOEP (Hourly Ontario Electricity Price). That is defined as “the average of the twelve market clearing prices in each hour.” IESO also says the HOEP is “a real-time market, meaning purchases of electricity are made as they are needed. There are occasions, when the best-priced energy may not be available due to limitations on the transmission lines. In this case, that generator’s offer is still used to help set the price, but another generator may be asked to provide the electricity.”
Since the beginning of 2016, the “real-time market” has valued a traded megawatt (MWh) at an average of about $16.00 or 1.6 cents a kilowatt (kWh). Compare that to what households and small businesses pay, an average price of 11.1 cents a kWh or almost seven times the market rate.
What the HOEP market is telling Ontario’s Minister of Energy Glenn Thibeault: the value you get ratepayers to pay for unreliable and intermittent renewable energy in the form of wind and solar generation has absolutely no relationship to its actual worth!
The data my friend Scott Luft posts highlights just how much the feed-in-tariff (FIT) program, with their above market rate contracts for intermittent wind and solar have distorted the HOEP.
Scott’s data source is the IESO although for reasons best known to them they don’t post DX (local distributed FIT and MicroFIT contracted generation) connected wind or solar generation. Scott estimates these in his spreadsheet and his estimates have so far proven to be conservative when the DX results are posted many months later.
Let’s examine the data. The TX (transmission connected) wind generation for the first 10 months of the current year (January 1st to October 31st) was (rounded) 6,966,000 MWh, and the DX connected are estimated at 1,079,000 MWh. Curtailed wind generation is estimated at 1,804,000 MWh bringing total wind (generated and curtailed) to 9,849,000 MWh.. Those 9.8 TWh (terawatt hours) could have supplied approximately 1.3 million “average” households with electricity if it was delivered when needed.
It wasn’t.
So what that means is, 26% of the available energy from TX connected wind power developments was curtailed. Combining TX and DX curtailed wind MWh represents 18.3% of available energy from that source!
Power sold at a fraction of the contract price
At the same time as wind turbines were delivering or curtailing those megawatts of power, IESO was exporting surplus generation to our neighbours in New York, Michigan, Quebec, etc., selling it for a fraction of the FIT contracted price. Referring again to Scott Luft’s data it should be noted he actually includes the average HOEP price as of the hour(s) of generation or curtailment. That price averaged about $9.50 per MWh for the 10 months using his data! The sale price is a far cry from the FIT and MicroFIT contracted value for wind of $135.00/MWh plus as much as 20% for cost of living (COL) increases and an estimated $120.00/MWh for curtailed generation.
What we can calculate from the pricing information is that wind power generated and curtailed for the 10 months cost ratepayers almost $1.3 billion. If all the 9.8 TWh were included in the exported surpluses the net cost to ratepayers after recovering almost $100 million (9.8 TWh X $9.5 per TWh = $93.1 million) from its sale value is $1.2 billion. That’s about the same as moving two gas plants.
Cost: $300 a year for each electricity customer
The monthly cost of $120 million adds over $300 annually to the average ratepayer’s bill — and that doesn’t include the additional costs of the wasted power from other sources such as spilled hydro, steamed-off nuclear or the idling gas plants.
While we can’t say for sure the exported surplus generation sold to our neighbours came from industrial wind power developments, it is worth noting exports to the end of October were about 18.2 TWh or almost twice the amount of generated and curtailed wind produced in the same time-frame. Was wind-generated electricity a large part of those exports or did it cause other, cheaper, power to be exported? It is extremely likely.
Energy Minister Thibeault needs to recognize he needs to permanently cancel LRP I and LRP II along with any remaining unbuilt wind and solar projects in order to stop the upward pressure on electricity rates. As noted in the press release from the Ministry September 27, 2016, “Ontario will benefit from a robust supply of electricity over the coming decade to meet projected demand.”
It’s time for Energy Minister Thibeault to recognize the power to reduce upward pressure on electricity rates resides with him; he should use it to halt purchases of power we don’t need.
Parker Gallant Energy Perspectives 
Best is yet to come. When we actually get to buy back the Quebec “stored” excess we produce at a substantially higher rate.
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But Parker isn’t this all worth it enviromentaly because the CIPK has basically bottomed out???? The air is 100 times cleaner now isn’t it??? This GREED ENERGY ACT has made the air cleaner and wildlife safer has it not????
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My instinct when seeing discussions on this is to produce more data – which I have, but with some restraint.
Year-to-date reported wind output (by the IESO) is almost exactly what it was in 2015, despite the addition of over 700 MW of capacity since June 2015 ended. While the inability to generate more power could be due to lower winds this year, there is a compelling case to be made that all new wind generation has been wasted/curtailed.
Here are two sets of summary statistics for annual capacity factors (to November 13th); the first without my estimates of curtailment, and the second with:
goo.gl/Gxeuk3
Back in the day we expected 30% annual capacity factors (meaning that on average 100 megawatts of wind would be producing 30 megawatts of output), but there’s evidence newer turbines in Ontario are achieving closer to 40%.
Which only leads, at least this year, to higher curtailment.
far better to curtail the unnecessary contracts before more money is spent on the the projects.
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The third quarter OPG report is out , showing that 3.9 TWH worth of water was spilled in the first nine months of 2016 compared to 1.9 TWH for the same period in 2015. The more wind power production, the more water that gets spilled.
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