OEB Hikes Electricity Rate ... 41% In The Past 2 years.

Today the Ontario Energy Board (OEB) announced new electricity regulated price plan (RPP) rates for the coming winter. In the winter of 2009-2010, the Off-Peak Time-Of-Use Rate was 4.4 cents/kWh. It will be 6.2 cents/kWh for the winter of 2011-12, which is an increase of 41% over the past 2 years; the single-year increase is 21.6%.  In only 4 years the off-peak price, in winter, has doubled through consecutive annual, increases of 33%, 10%, 15.9%, and 21.6% (figures are here).

Is the OEB regulating electricity pricing or selling gas furnaces?

Wind Production Records In Ontario Accomplish Nothing

Saturday October 15th saw record electricity production from Ontario's wind turbines.   No coal-fired generation was replaced, and emissions for electricity generation in Ontario were not reduced.

Value, LUEC Limitations, And FiT Failure

The comparative value of  of each generation source in Ontario’s electricity system is measurable.  I’ve written on this before, and recently read a couple of encouraging articles noting the shortcomings of the LUEC (levelized unit energy cost), or LCOE (levelized Cost Of Electricity) tools in evaluating electricity generating technologies.[i]   Presenting some of the data I’ve collected, in a slightly different way, will emphasize the need for a value analysis that also considers the supply mix, and demand characteristics..  The analysis indicates Ontario’s recent electricity planning foibles will not provide a low-emissions, sustainable, electricity supply.

Lessons From Ontario's Record Low Election Turnout

One of Ontario’s 3 main political parties had a lower percentage of eligible voters opt for their party than had been the case since 1943.

That party won.

Reported preliminary figures show Dalton McGuinty's Liberals won 53 of Ontario's 107 seats by collecting 37.62% of the 49.2% of possible electors that bothered to vote.  That's the lowest share of electors who chose the Liberal party since WW II. The first lesson for the Progressive Conservatives is that the Liberals weren't relevant in their loss.

Ontario’s Liberals Less Popular in 2011 Election Win than in 1995 loss to the Harris PCs

Ontario’s election saw the Liberals returned to power, but reduced in stature to minority status.  They won 53 seats, and a majority required 54.  I wrote a blog entry, prior to the official start of the campaign, that noted; “Events of the past 2 weeks have made it much more likely that the new government could be the same as the old one.”   I didn’t have the courage to predict that – in fact I said a PC minority was the most likely scenario.  But I did, in hindsight, provide the roadmap for a train-wreck; a map that the Hudak campaign followed. 

Mussolini was a teacher

“The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it comes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group,”                                                                  

Franklin D. Roosevelt 

I saw that quote, a long time ago, on sites opposing the imposition of Industrial Wind Turbines on unwelcoming communities; an action seen as deliberately facilitated by Ontario’s Green Energy and Green Economy Act (GEGEA).  I explored the quote, and FDR, and soon realized the quote not only wasn’t a great definition of fascism, but FDR was considered a fascist, an opponent of fascists, a facilitator of fascist …   Opinions of FDR appear to communicate more about the opiner than FDR.  Strangely, or not, the speech the quote kicks off deals with corporatism, and the distribution of income – both might be more relevant (and almost totally ignored) issues today, and both are only tangentially connected to the European Fascism generally associated with the term.   

Germany's Will to Power

“If someone declares publicly that nuclear power would be needed in the baseload because of fluctuating energy from wind or sun in the grid, he has either not understood how an electricity grid or a nuclear power plant operates, or he consciously lies to the public. Nuclear energy and renewable energies cannot be combined.”—Siegmar Gabriel, then-Federal Environment Minister of Germany

This quote was included in the anti-nuclear “World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2010-2011”, and it introduced two points: the first being that “overcapacity kills efficiency incentives,” and the second being that ‘renewables need flexible complementary capacity.’  The implication here is that because renewables need “flexible” capacity, and too much capacity isn’t desirable, inflexible nuclear baseload is undesirable.    If one buys into this premise, and if the question arises, “which is better,” a nuclear supporter is born.

That question doesn’t seem to come up very often.

September Stats: Preliminary Ontario Electricity Figures

A quick overview of some stats, for September 2011, along with some views of the data not included in the IESO monthly reporting.   I offer these only as my own calculations based on freely available data from the IESO site.

Mistakes in the data may be my own ... but it's unlikely.