Industrial Wind Turbine Owners Love the “Gales of November”

Having looked at IESO data for November 30^th, 2022 and several other days in the month, Gordon Lightfoot’s great song; “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” came to mind as it references the “Gales of November” several times in the lyrics. A “gale” is reputedly when winds reach at least 34 knots or almost 63 kilometres/hour and we have had quite a few days this November when they reached those levels.  Yesterday was no exception as they were over 90 kilometres/hour on several occasions in many parts of the province spinning those IWT and generating unneeded power while extracting ratepayer dollars.  No doubt they probably also killed lots of birds and some bats too who were heading south during the migratory season.

To put context on the preceding paragraph about the “gales of November”; IESO data for the first 12 hours of the day forecast IWT would generate 52,228 MW or 88.8% of their rated capacity but they had them curtail about 6,700 MW which meant they operated at 77.4% of capacity.  Over those 12 hours the market price (HOEP) averaged a miserly $4.12/MWh and IESO were busy selling surplus power to Michigan, New York and Quebec.  Exports over the 12 hours were 22,366 MW or almost 50% of what those IWT delivered to the grid. As a result, the export sales returned only $92,371 of their costs which (including the curtailed power at $120/MW) was just over $3.8 million meaning Ontario ratepayers and taxpayers picked up the missing $3.7 million of the contracted costs over those 12 hours. The costs may have been more, as an example, if OPG was forced to spill water but data doesn’t allow us to determine those additional costs.

For the following 12 hours of the day the HOEP averaged $39.45/MWh and we continued to export power totaling 18,907 MW which amounted to 47.5% of IWT generation (39,755 MW or 78.2% of capacity) during those hours.  If we rightly assume the exported MW were either caused by unneeded IWT generation or were all IWT generated power we ratepayers picked up the difference on what we paid ($135/MWh) for the power and what our neighbours gave us in return.  That would represent an additional cost of $1.8 million meaning ($3.8 million for hours 1 AM to 12 PM + $1.8 Million for hours 1 PM to 12 PM) exports over the full 24 hours resulted in costs of $5.6 million without any benefit to Ontarians.

Putting aside what the cost to ratepayers was for the exported power it is important to note the IWT owners earned a total of $12,317,000 for the day including what they were paid for the curtailed power. The foregoing was a cost of $146.15/MWh to ratepayers and represented revenue to the IWT owners of about $2,514.00 per MW of capacity so a 100 MW wind farm would have generated $251,400 for just one day’s output.  Not too shabby!

Perhaps Michigan and New York didn’t have to fire up their coal plants yesterday, so our contribution helped them reduce their emissions while increasing our inflation rate and adding costs to households and businesses experiencing energy poverty.

It appears our elected politicians are unable to see how they are destroying our economy and bringing harm to all Ontarians; much like the “gales of November” destroyed the Edmund Fitzgerald and their crew!

PS: Grid connected solar only generated 78 MW over the day!