Thanks to Natural Gas Plants for Helping Ontario Avoid Blackouts December 13, 2022

Few here in Ontario have noted about 5,100 MW of nuclear baseload power is currently down for refurbishment. The reason no one noticed however, had nothing to do with those IWT (industrial wind turbines) or solar panels spread throughout the province.  Neither of those renewable generation sources stepped up to replace the missing baseload as yesterday’s IESO data discloses. Yesterday simply demonstrated the unreliable nature and intermittent habits of IWT and solar!

Thanks to the ability of our natural gas plants to ramp up and down; when the peak demand hour for the day occurred at Hour 18 (hour ending at 6 PM), Ontario’s grid connected gas plants generated 5,239 MW, while IWT produced 767 MW (15.6% of their capacity) and solar was nowhere to be seen at that hour! Peak demand for the province reached 19,868 MW at hour 18 and gas plants produced 26.4% of it whereas IWT generated less than 4%!  At Hour 23 (hour ending at 11 PM) however, when demand was falling, IWT cranked out 2,166 MWh (44.2% of their capacity and 12.8% of demand) but even at that hour our gas plants were needed and produced 3,039 MWh or 18% of the hour’s demand.

Over the full 24 hours total IWT generation was 18,514 MWh or about what 600,000 average Ontario households consume daily while gas generated power was 102,696 MWh (555% more than those IWT) or about what 3.4 million average Ontario homes would consume over the day.

IWT and solar generation were almost completely absent as early morning demand rose and for the three hours ending at 9 AM the two renewable sources generated a total of 1,081 MW with IWT contributing 1,062 MWh and solar 19 MWh.  Their basic absence occurred as Ontario demand rose from 16,622 MWh at 6 AM to 18,863 MWh near the final minutes at 9 AM in keeping with what happens on a typical workday!  The good news is because both IWT and solar were generating so little over those three hours the HOEP (hourly Ontario energy price) averaged $180.21/MWh. As a result, we were able to sell off “net exports” of 1,703 MWh to Michigan and New York at an average price of $180.21/MWh and may have actually earned more than we were burdened for IWT and solar generation with their high fixed price contracts and “first-to-the-grid” rights over those three hours.    

What the foregoing points out is yesterday, without natural gas and its ability to ramp up and down; some 3.4 million Ontario households could have experienced blackouts as our intertie neighbours; Quebec, New York and Michigan would not have had the ability to supply us with all the MWh our gas plants did!

Proof positive Ontario’s grid needs generation sources such as natural gas that are flexible and can be ramped up or down to secure our electricity needs and avoid blackouts!

We should all wonder why do Ontario’s ruling politicians, their Federal counterparts, and the many eco-warrior; “charitable institutions”, seem so intent on creating blackout situations for the citizens of Ontario and other provinces by damning natural gas electric generation?