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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
Ontario's electrical supply remains fragile
The Great Blackout of 2003 provided a wake-up call on the fragility of North America’s electricity supply.
For some, it also provided an opportunity to start a family.
Awi and Tanya Sinha call their son Gabriel their blackout baby.
He was conceived on Aug. 14, 2003 — the night the lights went out for about 50 million people in Ontario and numerous U.S. states.
"It was such a unique night and such a special night for us," Tanya said.
Ontario Power directors named
Ontario Power Generation has five new directors who share something the company’s previous board of directors largely lacked: Broad experience in the energy sector as producers or customers and, in one case, nuclear expertise.
The new directors were announced late yesterday, a day after Energy Minister Dwight Duncan had said the appointments had been made but wouldn’t name them.
They are:
Ontarians to pay $1B for hydro meters
Toronto: Ontario electricity users will pay more than $1 billion on their power bills over the next six years to cover the cost of smart meters that the government wants installed in homes and businesses provincewide.
The smart-meter initiative, which will make Ontario the first North American jurisdiction to record residential power consumption data on an hourly basis, will add $3 to $4 in ongoing capital and operating costs to each monthly bill when the system is fully installed in 2010.
Province criticized for OPG mandate
Ontario Power Generation hasn’t been given the guidance to plan its future and lacks adequate control over its finances, chairman Jake Epp has told the Toronto Board of Trade.
In a breakfast speech yesterday, Epp also alluded to problems at the big Nanticoke coal-burning generating station, which has been out of action more than one-third of the time this year.
Epp said OPG is still waiting for the provincial government, the company’s sole shareholder, to define its likely role in the years ahead. The province had promised to do that this fall.
The process works
Re: "Procedural pitfalls" by Gord Perks (Enviro, Dec. 16)
In criticizing the Ontario Energy Board for its passionless debate, Perks has overlooked the pattern of environmental success that arises from due process and meaningful energy prices.
Ontario should rethink coal opposition, power agency head says
Ontario needs to reconsider its resistance to coal as an energy source with the government pledging to phase out coal-fired power plants by 2007, the head of the new provincial power authority said.
"I don’t see that coal is necessarily ruled out providing it can be used in a more environmentally acceptable format than the present technology allows," Jan Carr, appointed to lead the Ontario Power Authority two weeks ago, said at a conference in Toronto.
Coal station phase-out 'bad science'
Ontario’s plan to phase out coal-fired generating plants by 2007 is based on bad science, a report released yesterday states.
The study, commissioned by conservative think-tank the Fraser Institute, urges the government to abandon its coal decision, which author Kenneth Green says was made in a "hasty and unexamined" way.
Liberals sneak in hydro hikes: NDP
Announcement coming on day of federal budget
Ontario energy minister set to reveal new prices
The Ontario government is trying to sneak through an electricity rate increase today while attention is on the federal budget, critics charged yesterday.
Electricity hiked for Ontario industries, homeowners to get rebates
Toronto: Residential electricity users in Ontario can expect rebates of $50 to $100 a household this spring, Energy Minister Dwight Duncan announced Wednesday as he hiked the cost of hydro for large, industrial customers.
"Small consumers, farms, small businesses can expect, as of today, approximately a $300-million rebate," he said.
Power prices nudging higher
Ontario’s Liberal government has given the price of electricity a gentle nudge that will moderate expected price increases for large industrial power users, but pump up revenues for Ontario Power Generation Inc.
The government’s help in keeping a drag on power prices was gratefully acknowledged by chief executives of two of the province’s biggest power users – Inco Ltd. and Dofasco Inc. However, power prices for big industrial users are still likely to rise about 12 per cent in the coming year, according to government estimates.
Energy Probe 