What good is wind power?

April brought high winds, record curtailment of wind power, and record low consumer demand. Wasted and exported power could have supplied half the homes in Ontario for a month.

The Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) recently released their April 2017 Monthly Market Report with information on power consumption, market pricing, exports and a host of other data.  What the April report revealed was Ontario’s average demand was low — so low that when energy analyst Scott Luft searched IESO’s records, he found the total demand for the month was a record low. He searched back to 1994, which is as far back as available.

The total demand reported by IESO for April 2017 was 9,788,614 megawatt hours (MWh): Ontario ratepayers are conserving, or we have lost many industrial clients, or both!

Another significant fact appearing on IESO’s website is that April was a pretty good month for Class A ratepayers. They consumed 21.9% of Ontario’s demand, but were only charged 11.4% of the Global Adjustment (GA), $965.7 million.  Class B ratepayers (that’s you and me, and small businesses) were charged with paying 88.6% of the GA, but represented only 78.1% of Ontario’s demand.

Cost: $160 million for revenue of $14 million

The other disturbing fact about April was our net export sales of power. That totaled 1,311,120 MWh sold at an average price of $11.14/MWh for a revenue of just $14.6 million for power that cost ratepayers $160 million. The loss of $145.4 million for the month contributed to the GA total of $965.7 million.

That 1.3 million MWh of exported power — which you paid for — could have provided power for more than 1.7 million average Ontario households at a cost of 1.11cents/kWh or just $8.35 for the month! (Assuming average use of 750 kilowatt hours/kWh of electricity for the month.)

Reviewing the IESO stats provides relatively current information but it doesn’t disclose the source of the generation, or what caused the hourly Ontario electricity price (HOEP) to be so low. Did we, for example, have to curtail wind?

Wind power: wasted. Again.

For that information I depend on my friend Scott Luft, who keeps a monthly data file which includes not only actual industrial wind generation, but also an estimate (always conservative) of curtailed wind power which we pay for but isn’t delivered to the electricity grid.  For the month of April 2017, wind power generated and curtailed (521,056 MWh) was 1,374,873 MWh, for a cost of  approximately $182 million.

Curtailed wind in April was the highest on record since we began paying for it back in September 2013!

Here’s the fatal math:

net exports of 1.3 million MWh +

the 521,000 of curtailed wind = 18.7% of total Ontario demand.

Combined, the 1,832,176 MWh at the HOEP price of $11.14/MWh and 1.11 cents/kWh and what do you get? Enough power for more than 2.4 million average households (over 50% of all households in the province) with their average need for power at a cost of only $8.35 — for the whole month.

Why doesn’t Premier Wynne simply cancel the Green Energy Act and the contracts for projects not yet built?

Either math is a problem for the Premier or she doesn’t want to admit to another “mistake”!

Parker Gallant

May 28, 2017

*Please note the GA is the can Premier Wynne is “kicking down the road” under her “Fair Hydro Plan” where she will refinance assets the Province doesn’t own by getting Ontario Power Generation to accumulate the debt for the uncoming 25% reduction in our monthly bills for the next four years. Look forward to a reappearance of the DRC (Debt Retirement Charge) but on a bigger scale in 2021!