Wind-powered electricity generation isn’t what it was planned to be in Ontario.

I’ve been sorting through data for a mid-year status report post, at cold air, on Ontario’s electricity sector policies and pricing, The topics are many, and complicated, so I’ve decided to use Tumblr to write on some individual aspects of the changing market. This is the second short post.

The third anniversary of the last batch of feed-in tariff contracts awarded to industrial wind projects in Ontario passed on July 4th. Under the initial FIT contracting, the “Milestone Date for commercial Operation” was to be 3 years from the contract date, so mid-year 2014 is a good time to check the status of industrial wind in Ontario, measured against the representations made at contract time.

36 months ago the contracted capacity from wind generators jumped from ~4000MW to ~5800MW, according to the quarterly progress reports of the Ontario Power Authority (OPA).

Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) has both good data and bad communication on wind supply in Ontario. The “Hourly Wind Generator Output, 2006-present” can be downloaded on their site. It gives hourly output for all the generators on the grid. That’s the good.

The IESO currently shows 1824MW of “installed generation capacity” for wind. That’s the bad.

The OPA showed 1958,2MW “in service” in 2011. Using the IESO’s data file, and estimating embedded wind generation at 12.5% of the IESO’s grid connected wind sites, I get almost the exact same numbers as the OPA for the past 5 years. The IESO is therefore reporting wind capacity that is low even for 30 months ago. The discrepancy in what the IESO calls “installed generation capacity” may deal with the IESO’s definition of the phrase – just as their use of the term “demand” isn’t a measurement of demand.

Regardless, it is likely that Ontario currently has about 2800MW of generation capacity from industrial wind turbine generators, which is slightly less than contracted 48 months ago, and half the amount contracted 3 years ago.

The feed-in tariff contracts were to pay $135/MWh: at 2850MW a delay of 1 year in construction pushes back about $1 billion in contract payments. If one credits the delay with rural NIMBYism, that means rural NIMBYs have saved ratepayers about what urban NIMBY’s cost them when demanding all the benefits of electricity generation but refusing to tolerate local generation.

The savings all ratepayers will realize from the opposition of Ontario’s industrial wind fantasy are greater than that: contracting, planned to go to ~8,000MW of capacity, was curtailed below 6000MW 3 years ago, and the 2013 LTEP rolled back wind plans some 1200MW from 2010’s. The deferral on contracting 2000MW of wind for 3 years is worth about $2.5 billion, and cancelling 1200MW altogether could be worth another $8.5 billion over the 20 years of the term.

I’ll end with some graphics that check on themes I’ve written on in the past.

Because wind contracts coming online now were contracted at higher rates than supply contracted prior to the Green Energy Act and its feed-in tariffs, the average cost of wind is rising.

Because of high natural gas prices during the past winter, the Hourly Ontario Energy Price (HOEP) did see an increase, but the long-term trend that sees wind valued further below the overall market in proportion to the share of wind in the market, remains.

 

Background:

• Killing Time: Ontario Feed In Tariff

• Wind Feed-In Tariffs in Ontairo: An Info-Obit

The figures/charts for this post are in this google spreadsheet