Influence Peddling: lobbying in Ontario's electricity system

Prior to COVID-19 arriving here in Ontario, and paralyzing society, I'd read some papers dealing with the electricity system. These papers may seem a trivial topic today, but the last major economic shock saw the Green Energy Act successfully lobbied and implemented by people who'd been laying in wait for a crisis to manipulate.

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In a conversation on January 24, 2020, at an Ontario Energy Network Event, Terry Young, (IESO Vice President Policy, Engagement and Innovation) interviewed IESO President and CEO Peter Gregg.[1] The VP lobbed a question he figured the head of a storage company would ask if she could use the app for questioning, and the President and CEO responded with what a big area of focus the niche was for the IESO.

40 Days after the IESO’s leadership channeled questions for the head of NRStor Inc., with the President acknowledging even if storage wasn’t economic they’d figure out some tricks to make it so, Blackstone, “one of the world’s leading investment firms”, completed the acquisition of NRStor C&I L.P. The head of NRStor congratulated some financial firms on the sale, indicating it was likely the company was being shopped as the heads of the sole contractor of their products were having a conversation pumping their products.

Storage may be important.

Influence definitely is.

Blackstone would not be the first company deciding the way to get into the Ontario market/bonanza is through purchasing existing “stakeholders” - the industry’s preferred euphemism for insiders.

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Three documents I read this year (prior to the COVID-19 pandemic hitting the province) either target the IESO to form policies for the lobby’s technology, or suggest actions that fit into the IESO’s preferences (which are, unfortunately, often dictated by the Electricity Act):

• Replacing Pickering: March 2020 The Next Step in the GTA’s Clean Energy Transition
• Economic Analysis of a Proposed Hydroelectric Pumped Storage Project in Ontario
• Whitepaper on Wind Energy and the Ontario Market

With the likelihood governments will be looking to stimulate economies should we ever exit lock-down mode, and assuming they’ll forget the long-term damage done by the very stupid procurements done in Ontario following the financial crisis, it might be worthwhile to quickly review what’s being pitched.

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the IESO's continuing assault on consumers

The COVID-19 pandemic is affecting most aspects of life, and Ontario's electricity sector is not, and cannot be, exempt. It appears unseemly to discuss electricity hucksterism during a time of crisis, but hucksters came to the fore during the last big crisis (the financial one of 2008/09), so it would also be unwise to passively allow more heists.

A week ago I posted an article on Linkedin: A massive excess of electricity. I really can't say why I didn't post it here on the blog, but I will briefly discuss its origin. There were two announcements that I'd commented on in social media channels (Twitter and Facebook): the IESO noting a steep drop in demand and Ontario Power Generation (OPG) deferring the start of a refurbishment outage at a nuclear reactor. Upon double checking through version of the IESO's daily adequacy reports to confirm Darlington 3 was no longer being removed from service I discovered another nuclear outage has also been cancelled. Each of those things was unfortunate for consumers exposed to Class B electricity pricing in Ontario - and the taxpayers subsidizing the Regulated Price Plan consumers who once were - but combined I wrote the suddenly additional  3,350 MW of excess supply will lead to spectacularly high, record, commodity pricing.

Those things were, in my opinion, unfortunate. With social distancing the increase in personnel on sites required for outage work might not be feasible, and demand is low for reasons that can't be responsibly countered.

Yesterday the head of the I____ Electricity System Operator, (IESO),Peter Gregg wrote a message to, "our market participants," in which he explained the massive excess supply is deliberate:

One of the most important steps we’ve taken in recent weeks has been to work with market participants to minimize the number of generation facilities and transmission elements that are out of service. Although a certain amount of redundancy is essential at all times, this redundancy is especially valuable to provide the flexibility the system needs right now

I read something yesterday that reminded me of that old song: "Hey ho, hey ho, Peter Gregg has got to go."

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