2018 Ontario Provincial Election Discussion

[narduch]

they could easily transfer down the highway 11 corridor

it is a lot of money but is much better sense then the endless billions in nukes

I didn't realize how little energy is lost in transmission. But then again I'm no Electrical engineer.

My guess is that Ontario isn't interested in paying to build the infrastructure to get more power from Quebec. That announcement from last year was a drop in the bucket in the grander scheme of things.

Under these Liberals our electricity bills will just keep going up and up, despite the fact that we use less and less energy.

 

[steveintoronto]

I didn't realize how little energy is lost in transmission. But then again I'm no Electrical engineer.

My guess is that Ontario isn't interested in paying to build the infrastructure to get more power from Quebec. That announcement from last year was a drop in the bucket in the grander scheme of things.

Under these Liberals our electricity bills will just keep going up and up, despite the fact that we use less and less energy.

Ontario-Québec Interconnection Capability - IESO

 

[ttk77]

I didn't realize how little energy is lost in transmission. But then again I'm no Electrical engineer.

My guess is that Ontario isn't interested in paying to build the infrastructure to get more power from Quebec. That announcement from last year was a drop in the bucket in the grander scheme of things.

Under these Liberals our electricity bills will just keep going up and up, despite the fact that we use less and less energy.

That's what gets me the most. I'm fine in general with paying more for green power, and having lived in Toronto for 15 years now, I appreciate no longer having to deal with the choking smoggy air during the summer. I'm not fine with having gone through the effort of cutting my power usage only to see my rates go up to compensate for the lost revenue. I understand why they did that, but to me it indicates bad planning. They need to find a way to reduce costs and power generation when demand goes down.

 

[narduch]

That's what gets me the most. I'm fine in general with paying more for green power, and having lived in Toronto for 15 years now, I appreciate no longer having to deal with the choking smoggy air during the summer. I'm not fine with having gone through the effort of cutting my power usage only to see my rates go up to compensate for the lost revenue. I understand why they did that, but to me it indicates bad planning. They need to find a way to reduce costs and power generation when demand goes down.

Yup.

And the cost of implementing green energy is getting cheaper and cheaper. But we are so snakebitten in Ontario because the Liberals squandered so much money on the program in the past that we won't be trying to improve more.

 

[steveintoronto]

[...] I'm fine in general with paying more for green power, and having lived in Toronto for 15 years now, I appreciate no longer having to deal with the choking smoggy air during the summer. I'm not fine with having gone through the effort of cutting my power usage only to see my rates go up to compensate for the lost revenue. I understand why they did that, but to me it indicates bad planning. They need to find a way to reduce costs and power generation when demand goes down.

The bottom line for many people with the way electricity costs are calculated in Ontario, is that it *has no incentive* to be frugal with it. You can cut your usage by half, and barely see a difference on your bill. That is completely azz-backwards. Rather than Wynne supplementing the cost of electricity, leave that to market forces, and supplement the hidden costs, the sunk costs.

Users *must have an incentive* to be frugal. Ironically, the "Green Energy Program" has dissipated the opposite to what was intended.

I remember moving to Guelph some six years back, and being overwhelmed with 'Green Wash'. People lecturing me on how I was wasteful, which was absurd, as I've spent my whole life 'making do' as I'm from a very poor European family (wealth was destroyed in WWII). The whole concept of 'planting your own vegetables' was intrinsic in my background, only taking what you need also, never putting more on your plate than you can eat, recycling jars and clothes, and so on. I was also steeped in alternative energy (I have an electronic technology background)

But when I got a pamphlet from Bullfrog Power *bragging* about how 'we've got the price of electricity to go up', I knew right then that this whole "Greenwashing" was going to poison the well, especially for those barely scraping by. (Odd, isn't it, how those who lecture the most on this are well-off).

The nickname for a Prius isn't "Pious" for nothing...I cycle.

In the event, it's been *Market Forces* that have heralded the ascent of alternative energy, and the demise of dirty hydrocarbons. And how ironic that the Financial Times was at the forefront of heralding exactly that?

I used front page stories from the FT to re-assure friends with solar companies that they were winning. The Cdn press was still full of stories as to how important oil is to Canada (and by extension, the world).

Recent example, but the FT has been on this for over half a decade:

Renewable Energy Is Unstoppable, Declares Financial Times ...
https://cleantechnica.com/.../renewable-energy-unstoppable-declares-financial-times/
May 19, 2017 - With more then 2.2 million readers a day, the Financial Times is the ... The key to renewable energy becoming dominant is storage ..... and do it for cheaper total cost of ownership than conventional has been around since the 1970s. ... Could you please point me to some source for that 100 GWh number?

(To access the FT article, enter the headline The Big Green Bang: How Renewable Energy Became Unstoppable into Google )

Wynne certainly gets no accolades from me on the electricity file. She (and her predecessors more) have to own the mess we're in, and her predecessors include the Tories, but it doesn't get Wynne off the hook by any means.

 

[jje1000]

The Liberals definitely shouldn't be blamed completely for the energy fiasco, but their policies and governance is very much the cause for electricity prices spiking up this much- and their refusal to fix this on a fundamental level is causing more problems (especially economic ones) down the road.

The issue with the Liberals was that they attempted to create a green energy manufacturing industry by creating a captive market in this province (via FIT and local-production requirements)- of course the WTO threw that out out the window along with the whole premise of the project. But we're still left with these expensive contracts that will be expensive to cancel and damaging to Ontario's economic competitiveness.

Green energy IMO is still ahead of its time and until a cheap, easily mass-produced energy storage system comes out, green energy will remain reliant on intermittent power sources to fill in the gaps.

I'm not fine with having gone through the effort of cutting my power usage only to see my rates go up to compensate for the lost revenue. I understand why they did that, but to me it indicates bad planning. They need to find a way to reduce costs and power generation when demand goes down.

This is literally one of the larger ironies in this- the greenest path with the least impact to the earth is to simply use less energy! That's why the 'reduce' comes first in the reduce-reuse-recycle slogan.

But when Ontarians used less electricity to save on money- the utilities compensated by jacking up prices- which really tells you where their priorities lie.

 

[Northern Light]

But when Ontarians used less electricity to save on money- the utilities compensated by jacking up prices- which really tells you where their priorities lie.

This is a common issue w/utilities and one that is actually understandable, if problematic. Toronto Water has faced the same issue, as they desperately need money for major capital projects to address flooding, and water quality, but declining use means that even as they have massively hiked unit rates for water, their revenues are barely going up.

This is why much discussion has been had around creating a fixed capital fee for Toronto Water on top of usage rates, that will provide stable funding.

Energy utilities face much the same issue. Peak demand in Ontario, as is, is lower today than it was a decade ago.

While gross revenues are up, they aren't up nearly as much as rate increases may suggest, because volume is down.

That's only one small aspect of this problem, but one that isn't peculiarly Liberal except in so far as it has become an issue on their watch; and its one they could have (and should have) begun to address sooner.

 

[steveintoronto]

This is a common issue w/utilities ...Toronto Water has faced the same issue, as...declining use means that even as they have massively hiked unit rates for water, their revenues are barely going up.

This is why much discussion has been had around creating a fixed capital fee for Toronto Water on top of usage rates, that will provide stable funding.

Very well articulated!

This is, pardon the slimy simile, a case of 'throwing the baby out with the bathwater'...which then also invokes sewage fees. And now that I think about it, other than new-build demand, haven't heard much about the 'super-sewers' of late. (The ones that would straddle from Lake Ontario up to Huron, due to the need to flush them downhill)

I'm impressed with how this string has found issues that detach themselves from being politically caused, albeit politically exacerbated. If we could have this level of debate in the public realm with the three leaders, it would be a heck of a lot easier to see who 'has the right stuff'. (Edit: Pardon the cynicism: *If anyone!*)

A lot of the issues are hot potatoes thrown to whomever gets into office. Many if not most have been handed down for decades or more, but the onus is still on whomever is elected to deal with it, not keep kicking it down the road.

I think most of us would agree, there's no easy way out of this for Wynne, or any of them. We need answers, not cowards running from the real issues. And the electricity file is a doozy.

What must immediately happen to restore some sense of electric market sanity is an analog to this:

a fixed capital fee for Toronto Water on top of usage rates

And usage rates that actually increment up as demand increases, not the opposite, and not in a non-linear fashion such as is the case now where frugality is punished, rather than rewarded.

You don't have to be a market capitalist to realize how fugged that is. No matter what juggle the answer is that is proffered, it must foremost offer a scaling toward thrift.

More on this later, must do some research on this, especially if overall demand is down. That means the xmssn corridor, capacity issue is far less important than some believe. *Localized* generation has to be a huge part of the answer, but best I get correct reference.

 

[jje1000]

This is a common issue w/utilities and one that is actually understandable, if problematic. Toronto Water has faced the same issue, as they desperately need money for major capital projects to address flooding, and water quality, but declining use means that even as they have massively hiked unit rates for water, their revenues are barely going up.

This is why much discussion has been had around creating a fixed capital fee for Toronto Water on top of usage rates, that will provide stable funding.

Energy utilities face much the same issue. Peak demand in Ontario, as is, is lower today than it was a decade ago.

While gross revenues are up, they aren't up nearly as much as rate increases may suggest, because volume is down.

That's only one small aspect of this problem, but one that isn't peculiarly Liberal except in so far as it has become an issue on their watch; and its one they could have (and should have) begun to address sooner.

The origin of the oversupply is both largely tied to the global recession which led to mass-deindustrialization in Ontario, as indicated by the massive drop in demand from 2006-ish to 2010 in the chart below. Strides in energy conservation technologies, combined with societal shifts and financial constraints have further restrained growth in demand along with limited growth in the industrial sector, which is traditionally the largest source of electrical demand.

The problem was that this should have been apparent to the Liberals at a certain point around 2010 that demand had bottomed out, and yet energy projects continued to be procured up to 2016- which made the problem worse.

The second problem with hiking electrical prices to compensate for lower revenue is that it disproportionately impacts the largest electrical users in the province- namely manufacturing and industrial operations- recall that several smelters had warned Ontario back in 2010 that prices were too high even as they were some of the largest users in the province- their calls were ignored and consequently operations were shifted to Quebec (http://www.timminspress.com/2016/05/13/high-energy-costs-zapping-new-mine-opportunities).

Whereas residential users are somewhat of a captive market- industrial operations are largely more motivated by pure economics and can spread themselves across various municipalities, cutting non-profitable areas loose. This feeds into a vicious cycle where deindustrialization creates huge gaps in demand that household/commercial growth can't compensate for- meaning that utilites either need to cut on spending(creating issues with upkeep) or raise prices (making the issue worse). And even worse- the way the contracts are structured means that power suppliers are paid regardless whether or not their energy is used- resulting in the global adjustment fee that has boosted electrical prices.

Power prices on Ontario’s wholesale electricity market are relatively low, AMPCO notes (although this winter’s cold weather has driven prices higher).

But industries pay a hefty extra fee called the global adjustment, which covers the above-market prices paid to many privately owned electricity generators, to renewable power sources and to some of Ontario Power Generation’s facilities.

https://www.thestar.com/business/2014/02/26/ontarios_big_industries_plead_for_lower_hydro_rates.html

By way of contrast, significant commitments to new generation supply made over the last decade have resulted in Ontario having more than adequate energy supply to stabilize electricity prices. The marginal cost of electricity (i.e., the cost of fuel as represented by the Hourly Ontario Energy Price) in Ontario is lower than most other jurisdictions. However, the increased costs of contracted and regulated generation in the Global Adjustment and increasing delivery rates charged by transmission and distribution utilities will continue to drive rates up for the foreseeable future.

Nevertheless, Ontario still faces future challenges. Energy demand has fallen significantly, declining by 7 per cent in Ontario over the last decade. Increased fixed costs and declining demand are driving significant projected increases in electricity rates for industry over the next several years. The incoming cap and trade program and the refurbishment of Ontario’s nuclear power plants are also expected to place additional pressures on market costs. The Ontario government, in its most recent Long-Term Energy Plan, flags industrial rates will increase by 30 per cent by 2018.

http://www.ampco.org/index.cfm?pagePath=Analysis/Benchmarking&id=36556

So for every $100 in usage that appears on your electricity bill, $77 of that is the Global Adjustment fee. Meaning the cost of electricity use is only $23.

In 2015, the average HOEP (Hourly Ontario Energy Price) was 2.36 cents per kilowatt hour, while the IESO paid wind producers as much as 13 cents per kilowatt hour. The remaining 11-cent difference was then passed on to the consumer in the form of the Global Adjustment fee.

Solar producers, many of which signed contracts with the government for as long as 20 or 30 years, were paid as much as 80 cents per kilowatt hour for the energy they produced, despite the fact that fair market value for this energy was the same 2.36 cents per kilowatt hour. Here, too, the 78-cent difference was passed on to consumers.

And while the argument can be made that the Global Adjustment fee simply reflects the true cost of producing reliable, green electricity in the province, this ignores the fact that, in 2015 alone, Ontario sold more than 22.6 billion kilowatt hours of electricity – enough to power 2.5 million homes – to places like New York and Michigan at the fair market price of 2.3 cents per kilowatt hour – generating a loss of more than $1.7 billion for Ontario hydro customers.

So while Ontario customers are required to pay for producing green electricity, utility providers in the United States are able to access this same energy source for a fraction of the cost.

But when asked not to generate power, electricity producers must still be paid because the Government of Ontario initially agreed to purchase everything the energy producer’s facilities were capable of putting out.

http://globalnews.ca/news/2839995/w...erious-cost-ontario-hydro-customers-must-pay/

Regardless, this is a tough situation Ontario has gotten into- and one that's not easy to get out of. The utilities and the Liberals signed some bad deals- and we must now honor them (or try to get out of them).

http://business.financialpost.com/o...stem/wcm/a54c7399-be71-47d0-893b-95e2b9b8f2f9

 

[jje1000]

More provincial ongoings:

Kathleen Wynne to testify in Sudbury byelection trial
Premier chooses to forego parliamentary privilege to testify in trial involving former deputy chief of staff and Liberal activist.

Premier Kathleen Wynne will waive parliamentary privilege and testify in the Sudbury byelection bribery trial that begins in six weeks.

Wynne’s former deputy chief of staff Patricia Sorbara and Liberal activist Gerry Lougheed are on trial for alleged Elections Act violations stemming from a February 2015 byelection.

Sorbara and Lougheed are accused of offering a defeated former Liberal candidate, Andrew Olivier, jobs or political appointments to drop out of the party’s nomination race to make way for Wynne’s preferred candidate, Glenn Thibeault.

Thibeault, a former New Democrat MP, won the byelection for the provincial Liberals and has been energy minister for the last 13 months in Wynne’s cabinet. Olivier, who ran as an independent, finished third.

Elections Act charges fall within a lower, non-criminal category of violations, known as provincial offences. Penalties include fines of up to $25,000 and maximum jail sentences of two years less a day.

Last year, prosecutors withdrew more serious Criminal Code charges against Lougheed. Sorbara was never charged criminally.

https://www.thestar.com/news/queens...e-to-testify-in-sudbury-byelection-trial.html

 

[steveintoronto]

Excellent posts! We're not only now discussing Wynne, or competition, we're discussing the factors in a context that they should be. I've still to do my research on this subject, but this is a very fair point:

The problem was that this should have been apparent to the Liberals at a certain point around 2010 that demand had bottomed out, and yet energy projects continued to be procured up to 2016- which made the problem worse.

Yes, albeit there may be points to buffer that, but here's the really big if:

Electric cars. When even the Financial Times runs serial front-page specials, not only on alternative energy now beating hydro on price in aggregate (provisos apply), but the change in the nature of demand, we're still faced with the *multiple higher demand* to recharge electric cars domestically. This is a case of 'when', not 'if'. There are ways to mitigate the loading (night-time, for instance, and local storage)

Don't know if anyone saw Gore on The National last night, the interview, but even he has kicked forward his prognosis. Is the Ontario electorate ready for this discussion? Sadly, I think not.

And neither are 'the leaders'. That much more credit to the quality of the posts here lately.

 

[jje1000]

Electrical cars are definitely a future demand source- but I believe mass-market electrical vehicles will only start to outpace gasoline vehicles in the 2020s. And then there's still the time for gasoline cars to disappear from the roads (2030-ish given the typical car replacement cycle and the assumption that gasoline vehicles will continue to be sold). That's still a lot of time to account for- and we're facing a problem here and now.

Make no mistake- the Liberals inherited a problematic electrical industry, but then they proceeded to screw the pooch and make it even worse.

 

[Videodrome]

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local...ative-battle-in-carleton-spills-into-the-open

Patrick Brown sure runs a tight ship!

 

[steveintoronto]

I believe mass-market electrical vehicles will only start to outpace gasoline vehicles in the 2020s

That's still a lot of time to wait for- and we're still facing a problem here and now.

That's a curve I want to research. I'm pretty up on the topic, worked with a number of solar panel engineers and techs and installers/owners, and even I had trepidations that have now been proven unfounded. That curve may be changing far faster than previously plotted.

You're obviously up on the issue, I'm impressed, so I'll try and post again this evening after I've searched the latest news on this. You know...I thought Tesla was a crackpot a decade back. I'm being proven wrong. The question is how wrong? China is now producing *twice* the number of batteries than Musk is, and more than any other nation, maybe even bloc. And they're just ramping up...

More later, this has profound implications for Ontario's electric debate...

 

[jje1000]

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local...ative-battle-in-carleton-spills-into-the-open

Patrick Brown sure runs a tight ship!

Interesting:

MacLeod’s antipathy to Ghamari isn’t a secret. There are too many layers to disentangle completely, but it’s wrapped up in Brown’s attempts to assert himself in the party’s Eastern Ontario operation as a newcomer to provincial politics.

MacLeod was a top lieutenant to former Tory leader Tim Hudak and ran against Brown for the leadership after Hudak lost the last election and resigned; after Brown won, he favoured Kanata MPP Jack MacLaren, who was one of his earliest caucus supporters, and demoted MacLeod.

The Eastern Ontario Conservatives have traditionally been some of the most socially conservative (and liable) elements of the Conservative party.

By nominating Ghamari (who was born in Iran) over a traditional white-bread conservative candidate, is Brown trying to override and sideline those elements?

Regardless of his intentions- he better get them resolved by the end of 2017.