Ontario’s Power Trip: Power dumping
Parker Gallant
Billions are wasted buying subsidized wind and solar power that ends up being exported at fire-sale prices
By Parker Gallant and Scott Luft
During the spring months in Ontario, the winds blow a lot. For companies in the wind-power business, that’s good news. For the province’s electricity consumers, though, it’s another financial disaster that, on an annual basis, drains up to $400-million out of consumers’ pockets. But that money doesn’t directly fund green electricity for Ontarians who pay for it. Instead, the bulk of wind power is essentially surplus power that is exported to the United States and out of province at rock-bottom prices. Ontarians are paying $135 for units of power that are dumped on the export market at prices as low as $20. Sometimes, Ontario has to pay other jurisdictions to take the surplus off its hands. (Financial Post)
Storage technology is the key to high value solar projects, sadly it doesn’t really exist yet and a lot of places are finding themselves subsidising other’s electricity usage through over production in solar and wind at times. It would be better to lobby for storage r&d investment though than argue about it – no-one’s going to tear down capacity that’s already paid for.