Loan Guarantees and Subsidies

In my opinion, Stephen Harper has done the right thing proposing to grant a loan guarantee to Newfoundland so that it can develop the Lower Churchill hydroelectric project and an undersea transmission line to sell that electricity to the USA. From a political point of view though, he's walking into a minefield that pits Newfoundland (7 seats) against Quebec (75 seats). Rex Murphy in the article

Monthly Wind Report - June, 2010

Looking at electricity generation from windfarms in Ontario from last month reveals some interesting details. As always, the data that I am using is publicly available on the IESO website.Figure 1: Wind generation for Ontario in June, 2010 - Datapoints are hourly.As I've come to expect, sometimes the windfarms produce large amounts of electricity and sometimes they produce nearly nothing. The

Electricity Without Subsidies?

Increasingly, the question must be asked whether or not electricity generation can occur without direct or indirect government subsidies and loans. If the answer is no, then to what extent should the government be involved in the process and should it be allowed to 'play favourites' when it comes to supporting groups pursuing electricity generation.There needs to be a clear difference made

The Art of Deflection

So, Obama is seeking some big deal on alternative energies as a result of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Trying to link the two issues is akin to proposing to repair the roof when your basement is flooding. Sure, maybe your roof needs fixing, but shouldn't one focus on the leak in your basement?The US' problem is that their oil dependence is forcing them to ally with less than reliable

Weekly Wind Report

First the good news for wind advocates, this week, wind power broke 40% capacity factor for the first time since I began tracking it.Bad news, wind power fluctuated wildly across the week, rising as high as 922 MW and sinking as low as 5 MW. If we were only using electricity when the wind blows this wouldn't be a problem, or if we had another way of 'smoothing' out wind power across a week. But

McGuinty Raises Your Bills (again)

McGuinty certainly has found a way to raise more money for his spending sprees. Rather than raising the PST.. err.. HST or raises income taxes, he's going to raise your electricity bills. And because that money is not going directly to the provincial government, he hopes to confuse Ontarians into believing that its those nasty electricity companies, and not his government which is taking more and

More Windmills Won't Solve This Problem

I've been thinking increasingly about the problem of intermittent power from wind mills. Partly because I've been visiting the Spanish electricity website where they indicate a relatively more stable supply of electricity from wind power. Which made me wonder if having more wind power somehow causes the output on average to be more stable. It probably would if you had multiple independent

Electricity Too Expensive? Blame McGuinty

Seems like someone has found out that their rates have increased recently and that all that effort they put into trying to 'game' the system has not brought the savings they wanted.Now, I understand why she is upset. She was told that if she did as the government wanted that she would save money, now she is realizing that despite doing exactly what the government wanted, her rates have increased

Weekly Wind Report

So, I have one question for wind advocates. In Ontario, with a total installed 'theoretical' capacity of 1085 MW, for a one hour period, you couldn't scrap together more than 2 MW of output. That's pathetic.A nuclear reactor or a coal fired power plant may shut off for repairs but its generally predictable when it will occur and for how long. When they are operating, they can operate

Weekly Wind Power Report

So this week is probably exactly the nightmare that I keep referring to for wind power. The overall capacity factor was up slightly from last week but only because of a large peak that occurred between the second and third days.The power output went from almost nothing to over 900 MW in the period of a day and then dropped rapidly back down under 200 MW. Then it bounced back up and down for a

Weekly Wind Report

If there's one thing I don't mind, its facts. I've been open about my position on wind power and its usefulness (or lack thereof) in generating electricity for Ontario. So I don't mind looking and publicizing facts about wind power.So in that trend, I'll be posting data taken from the IESO public reports concerning wind generation in Ontario every weekend.For the week of February 16 - 23, there

McGuinty Ignores Facts, Pushes Ahead

This is a very good article concerning green power and their potential in Ontario. I would just like to highlight one very important quote.In a report two years ago, the Ontario Power Authority (OPA) told the government that "wind and solar power will never be more than a niche supplier of power in Ontario."People in the system know that wind and solar power is a dead end for Ontario. People in