Monday, November 14, 2011

More Wind Records For Ontario - Emissions Rise

Sunday November 13th saw record electricity production from Ontario's wind turbines.   No coal-fired generation was replaced, and emissions from electricity generation in Ontario increased over the comparable day from the previous year.


The initial IESO data shows 32,401MWh of generation this past Sunday, which would be a record. (endnote 1).
Hour 9 has 1426MW recorded, which is the highest hourly figure recorded.


Comparing production from Sunday November 13th, 2011, to the production from Sunday, November 14th, 2010 meets the expectations from my recent work in forecasting the impact of increased wind generation capacity in Ontario.  Specifically, wind can't replace coal, or gas, during the many points in time where there is no coal or gas generation to replace.  Wind frequently replaces nuclear and hydro.  This time it was nuclear.  While fewer nuclear units were operating in 2011 than during the comparable day in 2010, steam bypass procedures at Bruce B units were still utilized to curtail production during the morning hours.



Nuclear Hydro Wind Gas Coal Other
2010 242,776 76,693 15,006 39,482 3,098 2,280
2011 198,832 81,439 32,401 37,451 9,018 4,071
Variance -43,944 4,746 17,395 -2,031 5,920 1,791

The comparison of this years high-wind output Sunday to the comparable Sunday last year, not only shows wind didn't replace coal, but coal use increased, despite demand being lower.

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Endnote 1:  That figure includes 4 locations that are not officially in service, and therefore seem to be reporting as 0 when the IESO produces it's weekly .csv file updates.
The previous record was Saturday, October 16th, which I noted here
Spreadsheet is here