Those IWT (industrial wind turbines) once again, on August 13, 2022, repeated their shortcomings of generating reliable electricity which they previously demonstrated by their failed performance on August 12, 2022 and a few other occasions so far this month.
The approximately 4,900 MW of IWT grid-connected capacity once again fell flat in doing what reliable generation is supposed to do. Those IWT ignored Ontario demand which for the day (24 hours) totaled just over 311,000 MWh. The IWT delivered 2,361 MWh over the 24 hours representing 0.64% of total demand at an hourly average of 98 MWh or about 2% of their capacity.
Those IWT peaked at Hour 1 (hour ending at 1 AM) when they produced 289 MWh and their low point was hour 9, when daily demand was climbing. At hour 9 they managed to generate 8 MWh (0.16% of their capacity) or about 3 kWh per IWT. One should surmise at that hour and at Hour 10 when they cranked out a miserly 11 MWh they were consuming much more power than they were generating!
The daily Ontario peak demand on August 13th occurred at Hour 18 (hour ending at 6 PM) at 17,352 MW and those IWT contributed 89 MWh or 0.51% of peak demand and 1.8% of their capacity. Thankfully at the same hour Ontario’s natural gas plants ramped up to cover the shortfall generating 2,311 MWh or 13.3% of that hour’s demand.
One should wonder why in the world did our politicians (the McGuinty/Wynne days with Gerald Butts directing traffic) commit us Ontarians to provide IWT companies with first-to-grid rights?
When anyone buys an expensive appliance or piece of equipment, they would never be impressed with a warranty suggesting; “may frequently perform at levels of less than 2%” but for some reason our elected politicians did and so far, the current Ford led government seems content to allow the charade to continue.
Time to let the politicians know IWT don’t deserve their contracts and they should pass a law demoting their stature by revoking their “first-to-the-grid-rights”. It is obvious to anyone examining the electricity sector in Ontario, IWT frequently generate unneeded power during the Spring and Fall seasons for which they are paid to often curtail generation (an expense for ratepayers) whereas, as pointed out above and in other recent posts, they often fail to generate power during our high demand periods occurring in the Summer and Winter seasons!
NB: Peaking at August 14, 2022 IWT generation suggests it looks to be more of the same!
Parker Gallant Energy Perspectives 
Can we really afford to keep paying subsidies for the duration of the 20 year contracts? Has anyone ever figured out how much the people of Ontario would save if subsidies were cut?
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But, but, the birchoppers are saving the planet from imaginary climate emergencies.
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Unreliable intermittent IWT will obviously continue to underperform and will continue to cost Ontario taxpayers and industry $Billions. Isn’t it about time for someone to actually total the extra costs of having IWT in the electricity generation mix so we can see clearly that we can’t allow more to be added or their continued use after the contracts expire.
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Parker: Are the IWT contracts public?
My guess is that the penalties for “undoing” the mess created by McGuinty and Wynne (that is, changing or canceling the contracts) would be very, very costly. Not to mention the political pressure from the well-meaning but naive citizens who can’t or don’t want to understand.
Ford doesn’t have the smarts or the gonads to do anything. I fear that we will have to experience the kind of difficulties that are in the making for Germany and the UK before any politician in Canada will take a COMMON SENSE stand.
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