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Getting Zapped: Ontario electricity prices increasing faster than anywhere else
Read Our Report On Wind Subsidies in Ontario
Category Archives: Reforming Ontario’s Electrical Generation Sector
Hydro bill dodgers may see lights dim
WELLINGTON — Guelph Hydro is about to install load limiters that supply delinquent customers with only enough power to operate a furnace through the cold winter months.
Centre Wellington Hydro is considering following suit with the devices, which connect to hydro meters at the home or office.
Energy Probe executive director Thomas Adams blames the provincial government for fuelling delinquency.
Deep freeze
As these words are written at around 4:30 p.m. EST yesterday, the wholesale price of electricity in Ontario is about 10 cents per kilowatt hour. That’s the price paid by wholesale power buyers, including local utilities that run municipal electricity distribution companies. When Toronto Hydro, for example, bought power to supply Canada’s largest city through another cold spell yesterday, it paid an average 10.5 cents through the day. Under the miracle of Premier Ernie Eves’ rigged market, residents of Toronto and the rest of the province pay only 4.3 cents.
Record power use runs up tab
January’s cold weather helped drive electricity consumption in Ontario to a record high – and will cost the province $135 million in subsidies to consumers and small businesses.
Ontario businesses and residences gobbled 14.5 million megawatt hours of electricity in January. One megawatt hour is 1,000 kilowatt hours; a kilowatt hour is enough power to illuminate 10 light bulbs of 100 watts each for an hour.
Hedging bets
Re "Lifecycle: Electricity Deregulation," January 2003, National Post Business Magazine
Safety Cover-Up Alleged at Candu Nuke
An incorrectly installed reactor instrument disabled a crucial nuclear shutdown system at a Candu reactor at the Bruce B nuclear station for several weeks late last year, as British Energy left the Bruce Power partnership (ED, Jan. 7), and there appears to have been a cover-up with regard to the incident.
Tom Adams of public interest group Energy Probe, and some commissioners of the Ottawa-based Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC), question whether the new plant operating partners can maintain nuclear safety as BE leaves. Continue reading
OPG profit falls 69% despite price hike
Despite soaring electricity prices, Ontario Power Generation Inc.’s net profit in 2002 dropped by more than two-thirds and operating income was down 42 per cent, the company’s year-end financial results show.
Chief executive Ron Osborne received a zero bonus last year, down from $752,853 a year earlier, year-end filings released yesterday show.
Tory power plan includes temporary generators
TORONTO – Ontario will set up dozens of portable industrial generators across the province to avoid power shortages this summer, Energy Minister John Baird said Tuesday.
The generators are part of a strategy to add hundreds of megawatts of power to the provincial grid during the summer months.
Last year, a heat wave sent hydro use soaring, prompting the government to warn that brownouts or rolling blackouts could occur.
Other measures announced by Baird include:
Eves foresees a nuclear future
NIAGARA FALLS, Ont.: More nuclear power plants are one way to avoid electricity shortages that could douse the lights in Ontario this summer and into the future, Premier Ernie Eves said yesterday at a press conference where he confirmed the province plans to deal with immediate, short-term supply problems through the use of temporary, industrial-sized gas and diesel generators.
Tories kill plan to reduce share of hydro market
TORONTO – After insisting for years the provincial government should abandon the business of generating electricity, Ontario’s governing Conservatives are looking to make major investments in power plants to counter looming electricity shortages.
Provincially owned Ontario Power Generation recently announced a 50-50 partnership with TransCanada PipeLines Ltd. to assess the viability of building a new gas-fuelled generating plant at a downtown Toronto site already owned by OPG.
Ontario Hydro's successor tries to avert blackouts
Ontario Electricity Financial Corporation, the Crown’s legal successor to the former Ontario Hydro, yesterday released its plan to give Ontario a little more margin to avert potential rolling blackouts. The plan is to contract for 200-400 megawatts of emergency generation to be installed ASAP and to run for at least the summer and fall of 2003. Extensions beyond that are specifically allowed for in the plan.
Energy Probe 