I read the guest editorial "An Ill Wind" written by Mr. Shane Jolley that appeared in your May 9, 2011 edition and would like to help set the record straight with the following response to some of the claims made by Mr. Jolley in that editorial:
IESO reported that Ontario consumed 146 TWh in 2010 of which 2.9 TWh came from wind. That is 2% of our consumption. Nuclear provided 75.9 TWh or 52% of our consumption and gas provided 21.9 TWh or 15%. Most of the balance came from hydro.
Nuclear is base load power (we can't simply shut it down) whereas wind is intermittent and tends to produce when we don't need it! That is why we have to back it up -- with gas plants that are paid $135,000 per MW per annum to sit idle-meaning that wind production costs are actually more then the contracted rate of $135 per MWH if you were to add that support cost in to their contracted price. Mr. Jolley's editiorial did not make that connection!
If one was to also add in spilled hydro ie; wasted clean energy to that contracted amount; it gets worse. OPG regularly spill hydro when wind is producing and we don't need it-witness many of those weekends going back to December 2010 when we were exporting our surplus power at big costs to other juristrictions--at the same time we were spilling hydro which only costs us 3.7 cents or less per kWh. This means OPG must forego revenue which may have gone to pay out the old Ontario Hydro stranded debt. So wind, when it actually produces, delays paying out that debt!
The subsidies (without the above add ons) to wind developers in Mr. Jolley's editorial, appears to be the only number that may be close to reality but it is climbing rapidly and is now running at about $350 million per annum (as at the end of April with 1400 MW of installed capacity). With wind forcast to be at 8400 MW of installed capacity by 2018 the subsidy to wind (not counting the gas backup or spilled hydro, or steamed off nuclear or the new transmission builds) will be somewhere in the region of $2 billion.
Where Mr. Jolley got the $1.35 billion for nuclear subsidies I have no idea but in 2009 we paid approximately $$4.2 billion for about 76 TWh of nuclear production that we used (an average of about $55. per MWH). I believe he is referring to the power we paid Bruce Nuclear (private) which was power actually delivered to the grid. On occasions however, even Bruce is required to run off steam (not run it through the turbines) when wind is producing and they too get paid for not producing--just like the gas generators. This has occured on several weekends. The other amount we paid for nuclear was paid to OPG for power produced at Darlington & Pickering. So Nuclear produced 26 times more power then wind at an all-in cost of 5.5 cents a kWh including the production from Bruce.
If I was to guess what wind truly costs us, it is probably well over $250. per MWH or 25 cents per kWh. Add in the expense of transmission builds--estimated at another 5 cents a kWh to connect the wind to the grid and the economic sense of wind energy becomes a really dumb idea. Presently the wholesale price of power when IESO sell it is averaging about $31 per MW. Wind production costs the ratepayers of this province about 9 times that!
He is also wrong about line losses. Line losses to remote area's are approximately 9% and for local supply its about 2%. All Mr. Jolley needs do to figure that out is to look at his last bill to see what the adjustment was.
As an outsider that has spent considerable time looking at our energy structure in this province I find it disheartening that so many erroneous articles are written about it and wanted to assist your readers in ensuring that they get accurate information.
Yours truly,
Parker Gallant,
Toronto, ON
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