A contest for Ontario's Smart Grid Makes the Province look stupid

October 1st;

In partnership with MaRS Discovery District, the Energy Apps for Ontario Challenge is offering $50,000 to support the best new apps that use electricity data collected by smart meters. link

Harmless sounding, but if you are an Ontarian capable of being embarrassed, here's a short review of the history that should embarrass you.

government graphic: spending on "smart" to help you decide on solar panels

2004

Premier Dalton McGuinty makes smart metering a priority (2004):

Right now, most customers don't get a break on their bill if they use energy during off-peak hours when demand is lower. In particular, those off-peak hours range from about 10 o'clock in the evening until 7 o'clock in the morning. The reason they're not getting a break is because old-fashioned energy meters only record how much energy is being used and not when it is being used. Smart meters, together with more flexible pricing, would allow Ontarians to save money if they run appliances in off-peak hours. That's why we are directing the Ontario Energy Board to develop a plan to install smart electricity meters in 800,000 Ontario homes by 2007 and in each and every Ontario home by 2010. 

Lot's of spending ensues.

Today most electricity consumers have a smart meter, and most are now on "time-of-use" pricing.
Prior to the last election, off-peak hours were moved back to 7 pm, so as to exclude the highest demand hours of the day.

Sun-burned: Winter Electricity Rate Hike likely a record

Today the Ontario Energy Board (OEB) announced regulated price plan rates for November 1 2014 - April 30, 2014: my initial review shows the rate hike is over 12%  from the same period a year earlier, which is a record hike for winter rates since the OEB started setting rates, and probably also exceeds historical price spikes in the early 1990's, and the 1970's.

The OEB posts a number of documents in announcing the rates; Navigant Consulting has been providing a canned report for years, so I was just briefly leafing through it and found a new table displayed this time around - I've marked it up as Ontarians, and many others, have exhibited a lot of difficulty spotting the obvious.

Solar is expected to be 11% of the total - and that's in the least productive months for solar output!

I have noted solar is likely now exceeded the cost of hydro (I regularly update supply cost estimates here), and Navigant is now showing it too.

On another poorly played note ....

Backgrounder for Auditor General's report on Oakville Gas plant

Today the new Auditor General of Ontario will deliver, to the legislature, a report on the cost of cancelling/moving the Oakville Generating Station (I'll refer to it as the OGS, although now it is to be located hundreds of kilometers from Oakville).
The report will tell us more about the capabilities of the new Auditor, and the mainstream media, than it will about the gas plant.

It's been almost exactly a year since analyst Bruce Sharp provided the public with reasonable estimates of the full cost of the bumbling on the OGS (directly here, and second hand in the Star).  Former head of the Ontario Power Authority Jan Carr took a different route to arrive at essentially the same figure.
There have been higher estimates: Terence Corcoran found a way to put the ''one billion dollars' tag on the debacle, and documents released due to the legislature, and posted at Tom Adams' site, indicate the Ontario Power Authority (OPA) was authorized to go as high as $1.2 billion to make the problem go away.

Wholesale rates up double digits again in September; Regulated prices likely to increase sharply for November

Enough data exists to estimate the Commodity Charge for electricity in Ontario's wholesale market will be up about 16% in September 2013 (from September 2012), which will bring the year-to-date increase to the same 16%.
2013's September will have a weighted average Hourly Ontario Energy Price of about ~$22.24/MWh (down 15% from 2012's), and the 2nd estimate for the global adjustment (GA) is $63.08 (up 32% from 2012's $47.62); combined the rate is $85.32, which is ~40 cents above the YTD average, both of which are 16% increases over 2012.


A month ago I was noting the quality of global adjustment estimates, including a first estimate for September of over $87/MWh (sensationally misreported in The Toronto Star days later).  The second estimate is 28% lower than the first - and the HOEP plus the 2nd estimate GA combined is also lower than the 1st estimate of the GA.

Emphasizing how scary the global adjustment charges look, the far better than initially feared total dollar estimate for the month is $666 million (actually $666.7, presumably rounded from $666,666,666.66)

Submitted comment on long term energy planning.

The government of Ontario is doing a planning exercise regarding Ontario's energy sector - as they do.

The big changes since the last time they went through the process is more useless supply is now contracted, the planning agency responsible for producting a long-term plan (the Ontario Power Authority) has been scapegoated at gas plant hearings and targetted for termination (by all 3 parties in the legislature).

The current Minister of Energy responds indignantly to truth with lies, and the Premier's mouthed 7-months of platitudes about conversing seems far more likely to produce a record of hypocrisy than anything else; the implementation of pre-existing bad policy is occurring much quicker under cover of her "conversation" routine.

Most of the submission is copied from my submission on the supply mix directive in January 2011, although there are some updated sections and the submission ends with a quickly written outline of 3 themes I'd meant to get to at some point:

1. Market design
2. Carrbon taxation
3. Promotion of trade/capitalizing on a low-emission electricity sector.

In keeping with Ontario's policy of technical excellence, submission are text only; my submission is posted here in the font choice provided.

Ontario's Minister of Energy and 6 gazillion whatevers

Two days after I posted an array of estimates in Ways to estimate Ontario's losses on electricity exports, a Canadian Press article included a very different figure as coming from Ontario's Minister of Energy:

Chiarelli says Ontario is making a net profit of up to $6 billion a year on importing and exporting electricity

I was a little angered dishonesty might be the strategy to respond to fact, but recognized the possibility the minister may have been misquoted.

The next day a slightly different story was told by Bob Chiarelli on the CBC radio program "As It Happens" (3rd segment of 3rd clip here) as he claims, emphatically that the:

"province since 2006 has made between 5 and 6 billion dollars net profit on the sale of it's electricity"

Obviously I disagree, and the reader may not be interested in a prolonged "I said/liar said" exchange,  so I'll only briefly reiterate claims government entities have made on the issue:

Based on our analysis of net exports and pricing data from the IESO, we estimated that from 2005 to the end of our audit in 2011, Ontario received $1.8 billion less for its electricity exports than what it actually cost electricity ratepayers of Ontario
-Auditor General of Ontario annual report 

NENGO's target nuclear at expense of the environment

Greenpeace Canada and the Pembina Institute have put their names on; Renewable is Doable: Affordable and flexible options for Ontario's long-term energy plan (LTEP).  The document is primarily about criticizing nuclear generation in Ontario, and presenting, "good reasons for Ontario’s next LTEP to keep the province’s options open and not lock into nuclear."

Renewable is Doable basically presents 2 arguments: we don't need new nuclear, and it would be better to build a "cost-effective, low-carbon energy mix" instead of the new, not needed, nuclear units.

The argument questioning the need for nuclear isn't surprising to me, as 30 months ago I wrote in a submission on an aspect of another LTEP:

Value messages from data on an Extreme day for Ontario's grid

Warm humid weather moved into the southern Ontario yesterday and sent demand upwards.

The temperatures were very moderate in the earliest hours of the day, so demand was low - so low the pricing was negative for 4 hours and that meant nuclear units at Bruce reduced their output.   It took a while after the IESO banned negatively priced exports but there now seems to be, effectively, a minimum price just below $0/MWh (thus each of the 4 hours was ~$-4.50/MWh).
A unique feature of the day is not only did it experience some essentially minimum pricing levels, it also saw maximum pricing levels (for the 5 minute MCP - IESO report)

By the end of the day the average rate (HOEP) was the second highest daily price of the year, and the 7th highest of the past 5 years (not to worry - at $87.52 it's just about what you've been billed lately)

More unique than the pricing movement was the demand variance between the 12,458MW minimum in hour 3, and the 22,682 maximum in hour 20.  The 10,224MW difference is the most severe in over 3 years and the 9th highest since the market opened (including 2 days for the blackout of 2003).

I pulled some figures for the day as I was posting a report for the IESO week (Sept. 4-10).