Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Star Article on Surplus Wind Power, March Global Adjustment Watch

Surly Hamiltonian is always interested in the Ontario price of power, especially the Global Adjustment added to bills to pay for solar and wind projects. Here's a good Star article on how surplus wind power costs Ontario. Some excerpts:

"Coping with surplus wind power will cost Ontario electricity ratepayers up to $200 million a year if market rules don’t change, says the power system operator."

 "The dispute comes as more and more renewable power is about to flow onto the province’s power grid.
About 2,700 megawatts of wind and solar power are currently feeding electricity into Ontario’s system, three-quarters of it wind. That amount is set to more than triple by January, 2016.
Solar power generally flows into the system when it’s most needed, when demand for power is high."

"When there’s more power than the system can handle, the IESO sells it to neighbouring provinces and states — sometimes at a loss, and sometimes actually paying them to take it.
Those losses are absorbed by ratepayers, and added to the electricity bill as the “global adjustment,” which now often exceeds the price of energy by a wide margin.
So far this month, for example, the market price for power has averaged 2.96 cents a kilowatt hour. The global adjustment has been 5.73 cents a kwh. Consumers pay delivery and debt."

We're anxious to find out what the global adjustment will be for March, often the highest of the year. Lower heating demands than the winter (and obviously not air conditioning demand) combined with a lot of wind power is a recipe for a high global adjustment. Will it break the all time record for a month?

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