Messages from July's Global Adjustment figures

Ontario's electricity system operator (IESO) released the final July global adjustment figures yesterday. July is the first month of new global adjustment "Peak Demand Factors" for participants in the Industrial Conservation Initiative (ICI), and therefore it's the month that gives an idea how severe the cost shifting from the Class A consumers participating in the ICI to the other consumers in Ontario (Class B).

"To B." - Ontario electricity rate designer.

Collectively class A consumers share of the global adjustment costs shrunk to 16.7% from 17.7%, which had shrunk from 19.2% the previous adjustment period. From July 2019 thru June 2020 the shrunk share for Class A meant $215 million more transferred to Class B consumers - or the taxpayer that subsidize them - and that will increase by about $150 million a year for the next 2 years due to the Ford government's decision to suspend the requirement to reduce consumption during peak periods during the current adjustment period.

Some good news from the global adjustment reporting is Class A consumption is continuing to recover since sharply dropping towards the end of March

Ontario electricity demands - an appendix.

Last week Ontario's Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) released its first Annual Planning Outlook (APO), which is pertinent to the next article I wanted to write. This isn't that article - it's an explanation of graphics I created for the article I want to write.

While the APO the first of the new thing, it's just the latest in a line of forecasts intended to guide electricity planning in the province. This graphic shows 5 previous forecasts, but I felt I should explain their origins, and note they may not be strictly comparable. "Demand" is, in Ontario, a word that is, by itself, not very definitive.

Review of 2017 electricity supply in Ontario

You purchase a  full 9-unit container of energy .

The 3 men who deliver it pour out 2 units out while lecturing on consumption. 
They imply you should make more yourself as they leave.

A couple of months have passed since I last posted to the blog. This may be due to writer's block, or a lack of ambition - or maybe I was wisely waiting until I had something nice to say!

With growing knowledge, and curiosity, I seem to muddle all little issues into the broad themes I deem important - and not only for energy. In this post I'll touch on metrics from 2017 the reader may be looking to this blog to find, with hopes of connecting the data to bigger issues.

There are many possible headlines from an annual analysis:

• electricity "demand", as reported by the system operator was down, to levels not seen in decades
• supply generated from fossil fuels (natural gas) was sharply down too, and again to levels probably not seen in over over half a century
• prices for consumers on regulated price plans were sharply down in 2017 due to legislation and consequent debt (the [un]Fair Power Plan), but,
• total costs for supply declined in 2017, although average unit cost was up slightly (as demand declined more)
• nuclear supply was down as one unit (Darlington 2) was out of service for the entire year due to refurbishment, but the units remaining online largely took up the slack as Bruce Power had record output, as did the set of 9 units at Ontario Power Generation which operated during 2017, and
• for the first year since the system operator reported on their system's wind output, in 2006, it reported a decline (albeit a very slight one)

I didn't wish to dwell on numbers in this post. During 2017 I learned some new data reporting tools which I put on on a site where I invite data-gluttons to learn the filters and views to generate the typical year-end summary statistics, such as the total annual biomass generation for the past decade.
I do wish, in this post, to combine commentary to statistics to demonstrate very good figures from one perspective can have bad implications from a broader perspective. This is particularly important to note as the reasons rates didn't rise sharply in 2017 aren't sustainable.