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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
OPG is proof government should stay out of electricity
Eleanor Clitheroe, the disgraced former CEO of Hydro One, the sister company to Ontario Power Generation, must be smiling. The reason: It looks like the provincial government whacked the wrong board. While it is unfashionable to say anything nice about poor Eleanor, she can claim Hydro One hit its financial forecasts when she was running the show (pity she allowed excessive limo service and other goodies to blow away her own financial forecasts). Still, the Ontario government sacked her and the other directors.
Ontario grows a debt
Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, alarmed at the $1-billion-plus deficit facing government-owned Ontario Power Generation, has appointed former federal finance minister John Manley to get to the bottom of the crisis.
If $1-billion alarms Mr. McGuinty, he should ask Mr. Manley to check out the rest of Ontario’s crisis-wracked power system, starting with Ontario Electricity Financial Corp., a Crown agency created, in part, to track the province’s power-related liabilities.
Pitch-black darkness in 2003 an eye-opener for governments, power producers
TORONTO (CP) – Blackout 2003 was a study in contradictions: a moment of empowerment sparked by the absence of power, a blanket of darkness that trained a spotlight on the best in human nature.
It came at 4:11 p.m. on a steamy August afternoon – a massive power outage that energized unsuspecting residents of Ontario and much of the northeastern United States even as it robbed them of electricity.
Power grid needs web-like format
Smaller, more numerous power plants would cut risk of blackouts
How to prevent a repeat of the Aug. 14 blackout – one of the biggest news stories of 2003 – is the challenge now facing the U.S.-Canada Power System Outage Task Force.
In November, the international Outage Task Force published a thorough report setting out its immediate causes – particularly maintenance and communications failures by several utilities and grid operators, and failure by the Ohio utility First Energy to follow co-operative reliability rules.
Power shortfall looming: Report
The Ontario government can still shut down the province’s coal-fired power plants by 2007 despite a new report that warns of a looming energy shortage, Energy Minister Dwight Duncan said today. Without more generating capacity and better conservation, Ontario will face a power shortfall within two years, said the report released today by Ontario’s Electricity Conservation and Supply Task Force.
Liberals seek hired help to find power suppliers
Ontario: With the clock ticking on a promise to scrap Ontario’s coal-fired power generators, the Liberal government said today it is looking to hire someone to oversee the process of contracting for new electricity supplies. Energy Minister Dwight Duncan said the announcement is a sign the government will keep its promise to phase out the coal plants by 2007, but he refused to put a cost on the replacement power.
"It’s fair to say that we’re talking about a substantial sum of money," Duncan said.
Liberals begin to phase out coal plants
Ontario’s Liberal government announced yesterday it is taking the first steps toward contracting for replacement power to prepare for its promised shutdown of the province’s five coal-fired electricity-generating plants by 2007.
Dwight Duncan, the Energy Minister, said he will have a new technical advisor in place next week who will oversee a competition to supply the province with 2,500 megawatts of power, through new generating plants, conservation measures, or a combination of both.
Thumbs down for gas, power conservation plan
Energy board calls for central agency
Clean Air Alliance says idea would fail
Ontario should set up a central agency to design programs to reduce demand for electricity and natural gas in the province, says a staff report to the Ontario Energy Board.
But an environmental group says that approach is doomed to fail because the utilities that are supposed to help deliver conservation programs would be punished for success, as their sales and profits would decline.
From a position of power
Negotiating from a weak position is a bad idea, especially if you don’t have to. And yet, our provincial energy minister has announced this is exactly what he intends to do.
Although the freeze on electricity rates doesn’t show it on our bills, prices in Ontario’s unregulated electricity market are high.
Bruce Power mulls building 2 reactors
Bruce Power is considering a plan to boost Ontario’s electricity supply by building two new reactors at its nuclear power complex on the shore of Lake Huron near Kincardine. The two, new-generation Candu reactors being considered by the Bruce partnership carry an estimated price tag of $2.7 billion and would produce 1,400 megawatts of power, enough for more than 460,000 homes.
Building and operating two such reactors would create hundreds of new jobs in the Kincardine area.
Energy Probe 