Yesterday those of us living in Ontario may have had a demonstration of how IESO (Independent Electricity System Operator) manages the grid during high wind days when those IWT (industrial wind turbines) are humming!
It doesn’t matter that we are at the start of the bird migration period when those turbines kill birds and bats and instead it appears related to the potential price that may be achieved for exporting IWT surplus power. While their management makes sense, we ratepayers and taxpayers still suffer from the costs associated with those IWT having the benefit of “first-to-the-grid” rights as was evident yesterday!
With the wind blowing hard on a weekend day in the early Spring when “peak demand” is generally lower it’s no surprise Ontario currently generates surplus energy due to the guaranteed baseload power such as is provided by nuclear and a large portion of our hydro capacity. Yesterday was a perfect illustration of that as the peak hour at Hour 18 (hour ending at 6 PM) was a very low 16,892 MW.
IWT generation is notorious for generating unneeded electricity and when IESO estimates their needs for power over the upcoming year they rate IWT generation at an average of 15% of their capacity during the Winter and Summer seasons but increase that to 45% during the Spring and Fall seasons. So, as we approach the spring with temperatures more in keeping with a spring day, we shouldn’t be surprised those IWT generated a total of 73,602 MW or 62.6% of their rated capacity yesterday!
As is frequently the case we didn’t really need that IWT generation due to the low demand throughout the day, so IESO were busy selling off our power to Quebec, New York, and Michigan via our interties with them. We should rightly assume the IWT unneeded generation was either exported or caused other generation to be exported in order to insure grid reliability!
As it turned out our net exports (exports minus imports) totaled 66,891 MW (what 2.2 million average Ontario households consume daily) or 90.9% of the IWT generation and the average price we received was $21.03/MWh or 2.1cents/kWh! The $21.03/MWh was above the $15 dollar difference had IESO simply curtailed the IWT power so, by allowing their generation we Ontario ratepayers were saved $6.03/MWh. Not much but it made a small positive difference to the overall costs of the remaining 12,711 MW used within the province.
Yesterday’s IWT Costs
Despite the foregoing however it cost us ratepayers and taxpayers a bundle for just those 12,711 MW! To wit: the total cost of the 73,602 MW at $135/MWh cost $9,936,270 and we earned $1,406,717 for the 66,891 MW we exported leaving the net cost to us at $8,529,553 or $671.04/MWh!
Now, take a moment to realize if that cost hit us ratepayers for each of the approximately 180 days of the Spring and Fall seasons how much we are shelling out for that intermittent and unreliable power!
Parker Gallant Energy Perspectives 
If this government is going to make the mistake of renewing wind contracts at least they could cancel their “first right to the grid” and charge them for using our distribution system. The wind companies will be using storage batteries to get more money out of us. Also, the government is still considering the Meaford stored energy project that the IESO says we don’t need.
LikeLiked by 2 people