Ontario: Energy has never been cheaper...

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OVERKILL

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But the bills have never been higher.

http://business.financialpost.com/fp-com...ver-been-higher

Quote:
You may be surprised to learn that electricity is now cheaper to generate in Ontario than it has been for decades. The wholesale price, called the Hourly Ontario Electricity Price or HOEP, used to bounce around between five and eight cents per kilowatt hour (kWh), but over the last decade, thanks in large part to the shale gas revolution, it has trended down to below three cents, and on a typical day is now as low as two cents per kWh. Good news, right?

It would be, except that this is Ontario. A hidden tax on Ontario’s electricity has pushed the actual purchase price in the opposite direction, to the highest it’s ever been. The tax, called the Global Adjustment (GA), is levied on electricity purchases to cover a massive provincial slush fund for green energy, conservation programs, nuclear plant repairs and other central planning boondoggles. As these spending commitments soar, so does the GA.

In the latter part of the last decade when the HOEP was around five cents per kWh and the government had not yet begun tinkering, the GA was negligible, so it hardly affected the price. In 2009, when the Green Energy Act kicked in with massive revenue guarantees for wind and solar generators, the GA jumped to about 3.5 cents per kWh, and has been trending up since — now it is regularly above 9.5 cents. In April it even topped 11 cents, triple the average HOEP.

So while the marginal production cost for generation is the lowest in decades, electricity bills have never been higher. And the way the system is structured, costs will keep rising.

The province signed long-term contracts with a handful of lucky firms, guaranteeing them 13.5 cents per kWh for electricity produced from wind, and even more from solar. Obviously, if the wholesale price is around 2.5 cents, and the wind turbines are guaranteed 13.5 cents, someone has to kick in 11 cents to make up the difference. That’s where the GA comes in. The more the wind blows, and the more turbines get built, the bigger the losses and the higher the GA.

Just to make the story more exquisitely painful, if the HOEP goes down further, for instance through technological innovation, power rates won’t go down. A drop in the HOEP widens the gap between the market price and the wind farm’s guaranteed price, which means the GA has to go up to cover the losses.

Ontario’s policy disaster goes many layers further. If people conserve power and demand drops, the GA per kWh goes up, so if everyone tries to save money by cutting usage, the price will just increase, defeating the effort. Nor do Ontarians benefit through exports. Because the renewables sector is guaranteed the sale, Ontario often ends up exporting surplus power at a loss.

The story only gets worse if you try to find any benefits from all this spending. Ontario doesn’t get more electricity than before, it gets less.

Despite the hype, all this tinkering produced no special environmental benefits. The province said it needed to close its coal-fired power plants to reduce air pollution. But prior to 2005, these plants were responsible for less than two per cent of annual fine particulate emissions in Ontario, about the same as meat packing plants, and far less than construction or agriculture. Moreover, engineering studies showed that improvements in air quality equivalent to shutting the plants down could be obtained by simply completing the pollution control retrofit then underway, and at a fraction of the cost. Greenhouse gas emissions could have been netted to zero by purchasing carbon credits on the open market, again at a fraction of the cost. The environmental benefits exist only in provincial propaganda.

And on the subject of environmental protection, mention must be made of the ruin of so many scenic vistas in the province, especially long stretches of the Great Lakes shores, the once-pristine recreational areas of the central highlands, and the formerly pastoral landscapes of the southwestern farmlands; and we have not even mentioned yet the well-documented ordeal for people living with the noise and disturbance of wind turbines in their backyards. We will look in vain for benefits in Ontario even remotely commensurate to the damage that has been done.

The province likes to defend its disastrous electricity policy by saying it did it for the children. These are the same children who are now watching their parents struggle with unaffordable utility bills. And who in a few years will enter the workforce and discover how hard it has become to get full time jobs amid a shrinking industrial job market.

Electricity is cheaper to make than it’s been for a generation, yet Ontarians are paying more than ever. About the only upside is that nine other provinces now have a handbook on what not to do with their electricity sector.


This is a lesson on what not to do folks. Also, the 13.5 cents mentioned is probably the bottom of the spectrum. Our local utility gets $0.42/KWh for their solar farm, other deals are equally as lucrative.
 
Disgusting and to think people in this province were stupid enough to vote the same party back in again to continue the theft of our hard earned dollars.
 
Originally Posted By: OldSparks
I figure the Cons just have to keep their yaps shut and they will easily get a majority. People are plenty upset with Mother Wynne and I don't blame them.
I really hope that is the case next round of elections.
 
Originally Posted By: xxch4osxx
Disgusting and to think people in this province were stupid enough to vote the same party back in again to continue the theft of our hard earned dollars.


Indeed. I cannot believe that after McGuilty that Wynnebat, his cohort, was able to get into power. It blew my bloody mind.
 
Originally Posted By: JC1
Maybe it's cheaper for them to generate, but not cheaper to buy.


Read the article. It is cheap. it is the Global Adjustment that drives it up. The nukes cost us 6.5 cents per KWh in case you didn't know.
 
Originally Posted By: xxch4osxx
Disgusting and to think people in this province were stupid enough to vote the same party back in again to continue the theft of our hard earned dollars.
It is not just a Canada thing.
 
Here there's a "conservation charge" on the electric bill, the dough from which is used to mail you warnings about how much more electricity YOU use compared to the house next door, which may be empty all winter. They then charge a sales tax on the "conservation charge" at the bottom of the bill. The sheeple don't even see it.
 
Here there's a "conservation charge" on the electric bill, the dough from which is used to mail you warnings about how much more electricity YOU use compared to the house next door, which may be empty all winter. They then charge a sales tax on the "conservation charge" at the bottom of the bill. The sheeple don't even see it. Assume the position.
 
Corruption is corruption no matter who's in power.

What percent of Ontario's power is coming from solar and wind? And are those power sources powering communities that would otherwise be running on more expensive diesel, or supplanting energy from nuclear/hydro?

I can appreciate the sentiment for wanting renewable energy. It sounds like the residential utility customers are really getting fleeced. Time to tell the cronies the gravy train's over.
 
Originally Posted By: sciphi

What percent of Ontario's power is coming from solar and wind?




The vast, VAST majority, comes from the three nukes. Darlington could [censored] and make more power than all of our solar combined.
 
Maybe I am mistaken but I thought we have been producing a surplus of electricity for years, and selling it to our US neighbours for less than it costs us to produce. We as consumers have to pay for this loss.

I was recently in Toronto and walked right past Queen's Park (provincial government buildings) and I didn't see any solar panels on their own buildings, or any wind powered devices in their own front or back yard. Our current premier (Kathleen Witch) seems to have a thing against natural gas. I wonder if the government buildings are heated with natural gas. I would love to turn the gas valve off in a cold day in winter and see how she likes that.

All as I can say is, no one in our current government seems capable to do simple math on a simple calculator, or even on a piece of paper by hand. There must be too much tax money around for them to waste, unlike the rest of us normal workers in Ontario who have to scrimp and save, to be able to barely survive and exist.
 
Leafs arent winning games in Toronto so they can dim half of the lights in the city. Go Habs Go
banana2.gif
 
You need to talk some sense into your fellow Ontarians. Too many die hard liberals no matter what the cost. Despite QC having cheap hydro electricity the prices continue to trend higher and higher...keep using less energy (ie LED bulbs, adding insulation, more efficient heating/cooling yet still end up paying more at end of day. Getting gouged by the govt...is like any corp, they need to make more money year after year.
 
Originally Posted By: OVERKILL
Originally Posted By: sciphi

What percent of Ontario's power is coming from solar and wind?




The vast, VAST majority, comes from the three nukes. Darlington could [censored] and make more power than all of our solar combined.


6% from wind power but hom many millions/billions spent on implementing it? A real farce..
 
Originally Posted By: 51Plymouth
Maybe I am mistaken but I thought we have been producing a surplus of electricity for years, and selling it to our US neighbours for less than it costs us to produce. We as consumers have to pay for this loss.

Why would you do that ? You may not sell extra power to US utility companies at retail price that you charge residential customers in Canada, but anything less than cost +100% is ridiculous.
 
Originally Posted By: HTSS_TR
Originally Posted By: 51Plymouth
Maybe I am mistaken but I thought we have been producing a surplus of electricity for years, and selling it to our US neighbours for less than it costs us to produce. We as consumers have to pay for this loss.

Why would you do that ? You may not sell extra power to US utility companies at retail price that you charge residential customers in Canada, but anything less than cost +100% is ridiculous.
I know electricity is exported to the NE US from Canada. They would have to be close to the wholesale rates in the US markets I would guess.

http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=21992

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Originally Posted By: HTSS_TR
Originally Posted By: 51Plymouth
Maybe I am mistaken but I thought we have been producing a surplus of electricity for years, and selling it to our US neighbours for less than it costs us to produce. We as consumers have to pay for this loss.

Why would you do that ? You may not sell extra power to US utility companies at retail price that you charge residential customers in Canada, but anything less than cost +100% is ridiculous.


Because we have to get rid of it. When the wind starts blowing and we are already meeting the grid needs, where does that power go? We sell it to the US; we essentially PAY them to take it, sometimes at rates as low as 1/2 a cent a KWh whilst we are paying that generator obscene subsidized rates for their power.

As per a previous thread, we actually started dumping steam at Bruce (bypassing the turbines) to drop generation below the governor threshold because it was cheaper to dump that generation potential than it was to sell the excess wind and solar power to somebody else. That is, it is cheaper to use the subsidized wind/solar generation at whatever obscene rate they are being paid and dump the 6.5 cent power to the wind than it is to sell that power when it happens and nobody wants it.

Historically, Ontario sold power at a profit to the US. Excess generation from the nukes, hydro and old coalers, all of which were baseload providers and could be depending on would be leveraged for this purpose. With the coalers going off-line and the nukes and hydro providing the base, the base is smaller now and the intermittents dump in whenever they feel like it. If the demand is there, great! If it isn't, what do you do with the power?

This is the problem with creating these types of agreements to force a particular technology/technologies based on agenda into a market. There is no planning, no foresight and subsequently no perception of the potential consequences. These are the consequences.

I've posted this picture before but it begs posting again:

 
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