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Getting Zapped: Ontario electricity prices increasing faster than anywhere else
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Category Archives: Reforming Ontario’s Electrical Generation Sector
Bruce sale talks spark fears
British Energy confirms it’s trying to unload 82% stake
Cash-strapped British Energy PLC confirmed yesterday it’s in talks to sell its 82 per cent stake in Bruce Power, the nuclear generating station on Lake Huron that is Ontario’s largest electricity provider.
The move raised concerns on at least two fronts – that the potential buyers have no experience running nuclear power plants and that blackouts could result next summer if Bruce Power’s $400 million plan to restart two reactors is delayed by the sale.
Bruce Power deal close, chief says
Negotiations to buy out Bruce Power’s troubled majority partner British Energy are "quite far advanced," Bruce Power’s chief executive Duncan Hawthorne said in an interview yesterday.
Bruce Power has been in discussions with a group led by Cameco Corp. to buy out British Energy’s 82.4 per cent stake.
"Before Christmas, I think we’ll have made a pretty clear announcement of where we are," Hawthorne said.
Public outcry inspires electricity price cap
Market players were flummoxed following Premier Ernie Eves’ November 11th intervention in the competitive electricity market. Most participants were expecting a rebate, but few, if any, foresaw a dramatic 4.3 cent per kilowatt-hour (kWh) price cap.
Ontario Hydro: gone but not forgotten
Taxpayer-backed electricity liabilities, which the government promised would begin shrinking and would soon disappear, are rising. The basic facts of this issue and the underlying problems related to taxpayer electricity debt are not widely enough understood.
New market fails to keep up with supply and demand
Earlier this year, Ontario opened its electricity market to competition. Consumers could buy their power from municipal utilities or from a retailer licensed by the Ontario Energy Board, a government body that regulates transmission and distribution rates. 
Energy minister under fire
Ontario’s energy minister was accused yesterday of being cavalier about the province’s supply of electricity.
During debate in the Legislature, NDP Leader Howard Hampton was questioning the government about keeping secret the names of power companies that suspend electricity production and increasing fears of blackouts or brownouts.
Bright lights, big pity
Energy industry watcher Tom Adams has a dream. Someday, he hopes, the provinces of Canada will rise up and live out the true meaning of energy market deregulation. In his ideal world, individual and corporate consumers alike would pay bills based on the actual price of the power they use at the time they use it. Residential users would say goodbye to that robotic-looking, glass-faced device that some folks (those who know watts from volts) call the Ferraris disk meter, which was invented in 1890 and has lived well past its best-before date. Why? Continue reading
Cold snap brings risk of blackouts
Santa Claus came early this year, bringing the gift of emergency power imports that barely kept Ontario’s Christmas lights, shopping malls and heavy industries from flickering into blackouts last week.
Ontario citizens might pray that Santa or another cold snap shows up again during next summer’s dog days. Chaos in Ontario’s power supply system is just around the corner, industry experts warn.
Ontario city that thrives on oil fears economic 'stagnation'
Sarnia businessman Ray Curran considers his city to be a "mini-Alberta" and, like that province, it stands to be hurt by the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, he contends.
"Sarnia is the centre of the oil and chemical industry of Ontario. We’ve got the Shells, we’ve got the Imperial Oils. And we feel that Kyoto is zeroing in on that segment," laments Curran, an outspoken critic of the accord and head of labour relations for the Sarnia Construction Association.
Ontario moves to fine-tune power sector legislation
More Ontario residents will qualify for a price cap on the electricity they consume after the provincial government introduced further changes yesterday to legislation governing the power sector.
The new measures will see the number of people eligible for the capped rate expanded from households and farmers to people who live in condominiums and apartment buildings, businesses with less than 50 employees and a recognized charitable institution.
Energy Probe 