These days, Hydro can laugh at the heat
Toronto Star – On Wednesday, as temperatures reached 34C in Toronto with a balmy humidex of 41C, Ontarians were projected to consume 24,227 megawatts. Now, Ontario can handle demands up to 27,572 megawatts, leaving the province with the ability to return the electricity favours to sweltering Americans.
Supply is up and demand is down, which is due to a confluence of factors.
Ontario energy gets boost with new Bruce to Milton power line
Toronto Star – A new, 180-kilometre electricity transmission line connecting 3,000 megawatts of power to Ontario’s power grid is up and running. The new line, built by Hydro One from Bruce County to Milton, officially opened Tuesday. It should help open up the grid to dozens of wind and solar power projects that have been bottled up with no place to send their power.
Toronto Star – Ontario will offer industries a discount of about 27 per cent off their hydro rates if they bring new jobs and investment to the province, says energy minister Chris Bentley. Bentley said the province will apply the discount to power that otherwise would be exported. New businesses entering the province will be able to get contracts of up to 20 years for power at $55 a megawatt hour, or 5.5 cents a kilowatt hour. That price, which includes transmission and delivery costs, would normally be about $75 a megawatt hour or 7.5 cents a kilowatt hour, he said.
Toronto Star – Ontario’s energy minister ducked Friday when asked whether the province intends to go ahead with building new nuclear reactors at Darlington. Chris Bentley said the province is still mulling the options of new nuclear reactors, and refused to comment directly when asked whether one option is no new reactors at all. Ontario Power Generation has proposed building two new reactors at Darlington, with a combined capacity of about 2,000 megawatts.
Financial Post - News of old king coal being out of favour seems exaggerated. Fresh data from BP’s Annual Statistical Review suggests coal is alive and well – and even gaining ground, despite earning a reputation of being one of the biggest polluters on the planet.
Toronto Star - A report by Ontario’s auditor-general that blamed renewable energy projects for pumping up electricity prices was flawed, according to a critique commissioned by two environmental groups. Environmental Defence and the Pembina Institute, who commissioned the critique by Bridgepoint Group, say the auditor-general unfairly fingered renewable energy.
Province’s power giants keep losing ground under green policies
Financial Post (editorial) – When Ontario Minister of Finance Dwight Duncan presented his recent budget he lamented the disappointing performance of the government’s two major electricity players. So, why did power generator OPG and power distributor Hydro One miss their forecast? Could it be that the Green Energy and Economy Act, in its third anniversary May 14, 2009, has affected OPG and Hydro One? Could be.
Grits’ green policy ‘timid’
Windsor Star – The governing Liberals have dropped the ball on energy conservation since it passed the Green Energy Act three years ago, Ontario's environmental watchdog said Tuesday.
The "bold new plan" the Liberals promised to deliver in 2009 has "given way to caution and timidity," leaving unfulfilled promises that are possibly years away from completion, commissioner Gord Miller said in the first instalment of his annual conservation report.
Liberal government faces lawsuit over cancelled gas plant
CTV News – Ontario's auditor general should be called in to look at the potential cost to taxpayers of the Liberal government's decision to cancel gas plants in Oakville and Mississauga, the New Democrats said Friday.
The Liberals cancelled a planned 280-megawatt gas power plant in Mississauga just days before last year's election, after scrapping another one in nearby Oakville the year before.
And it warns that with thousands of megawatts of new wind power due to flow onto the grid over the next few years, the problem will only more acute if rules are changed.
Power play afoot
Windsor Star (editorial) – Windsor Mayor Eddie Francis, who is also chairman of the city's publicly owned electrical distributor Enwin Utilities, mused this week that "something is going on" in Ontario's electric power system.
As in, something major is afoot, as in a multibillion-dollar big bang. That could mean sales of city utility companies, share swaps or sales of generation facilities, pension fund purchases - perhaps all of the above.
If Ontario puts off the debate about our electricity supply much longer there won't be much of the provincial economy left to rescue from its ravages. Ontario's economy and its jobs market are both in a terrible state, and both are directly linked to the costs and confusions in our half-public, half-private, totally messed-up power system.
