More hydro news that will cost you $$$ and make your blood boil.

[ZR]

There are structural problems in the electricity system that the Wynne Liberals created, and if I become Premier, I am committed to getting it right.
I will fix one of the most egregious problems they created: allowing their party insiders to get rich. Donations from energy companies to the Liberal Party amount to $1.3 million. Kathleen Wynne remains so beholden to these insiders that the system remains tainted and broken.
This should never have happened.
Every time you pay your bill, you pay more and Wynne Liberal friends get richer.
And while this has been obvious for a long time, the Wynne Liberals won’t stop signing new bad energy contracts. In fact, they are about to sign hundreds of new sweetheart green energy contracts by the end of the summer.
It’s a waste of money, and doesn’t benefit families.
As premier I would stop the signing of any new contracts.
The Wynne Liberals are approving new energy that will amount to powering up 25,000 homes per year. This is, quite simply, power that Ontario doesn’t need. In our existing supply we already have enough.
In fact, we have more than enough. We waste a billion dollars a year by producing energy that we sell for a loss, or simply give away. This is wasted electricity that amounts to powering 786,000 homes.
And to add insult to injury, we don’t even use much of the green energy Ontario already has: hydroelectric. We’re spilling water at Niagara Falls at the same time we are signing more bad contracts under the Green Energy Act. Or as I like to call it, the Bad Contracts Act.
They are bad contracts not just because we don’t need the power but because the Liberals signed them with their donors and friends. Thousands of green energy contracts were awarded to companies that have together donated $1.3 million to the Liberals.
And we now know that the Wynne Liberals will pay for these expensive contracts by raising your hydro rates the moment they have the chance.
That’s because when they made a big splash saying they were going to “fix” their hydro mess, all they really did was punt the problem down the road. Their cynical “fix” will just lower your energy bills until the election is over.
They’re using your money for their re-election campaign, hoping you’ll forget about their legacy of scandal and waste in the electricity system.
Ontario once had some of the most competitive electricity rates in North America. After 14 years of Liberal rule, we have some of the highest and fastest rising hydro rates. Since the Liberals came into power, the hydro bill of the average family has increased by more than $1,000 a year.
Quite simply, life is harder under the Wynne Liberals.
This has to change. Life’s already too unaffordable. Ontario families and businesses cannot afford higher hydro rates.
I already announced that I will rein in exorbitant executive compensation in the energy sector. I’ve also announced an Ontario PC government will put a stop to Kathleen Wynne’s path of destruction by dismantling the Green Energy Act.
Today I am pledging we will put an immediate freeze on any new energy contracts that force Ontario families to pay for hydro they don’t need.
This means no new sweetheart deals for wind or solar insiders. No exceptions. Workers, families and businesses come first. Any savings will be used to provide much needed hydro relief.
The next election will be about who will make it easier for you and your family to make ends meet and get ahead.
It’s time for an energy policy that does not put secret deals for Liberal insiders first. It’s time for a change that makes life more affordable for Ontario families.
That’s what change for the better looks like.
- Patrick Brown is the Ontario PC Leader

[ZR]

From cp24


When it comes to carbon pricing and greenhouse gas reduction schemes, Canada has seen the future and it’s in Ontario.
Problem is, it’s a mess.
After boasting for years about closing the last of Ontario’s coal-fired electricity plants in 2014, Premier Kathleen Wynne’s Liberal government is now a not-so proud co-owner of one of the largest coal-fired electricity plants in the United States.
This after it sold control of Hydro One, the province’s electricity transmitter, to the private sector for a quick fix of money to fulfill Wynne’s 2014 election promise to balance Ontario’s cash-strapped books in 2017-18.
Meanwhile, 340 workers at a Siemens Canada wind turbine blade manufacturing plant in Tillsonburg, Ont., just lost their jobs.
The plant was one of four set up under the province’s ill-advised and since dramatically downsized multi-billion dollar green energy deal with South Korea’s Samsung corporation.
A series of highly critical reports from the province’s Auditor General on the government’s green energy program have led many beleaguered taxpayers to conclude wind turbines and solar panels don’t run on wind and the sun so much as on public subsidies, and only for as long as the subsidies last.
Wynne’s cap-and-trade carbon pricing scheme, which started Jan. 1 and which she made no mention of imposing in the last election, will be taking almost $2 billion annually out of Ontarians’ pockets, according to the government’s estimates.
This while Ontarians are saddled with the highest electricity prices in Canada, which have doubled in the past decade.
Desperate to get re-elected in an election she must call by June, 2018, Wynne will now subsidize hydro rates by $24 billion for the next four years.
Already the most indebted sub-sovereign borrower in the world, Ontario will borrow between $21 billion and $93 billion more to finance this, according to the province’s Financial Accountability Officer.
On Monday, Ontario Climate Change Minister Glen Murray announced he’s quitting politics to head an environmental think-tank.
But that’s a footnote to Ontario’s long, painful and expensive experience with green energy, a cautionary tale of what not to do, which will at least have some value if other provinces learn from its mistakes.

[ZR]

So we've been reading about how Ontario is actually producing too much power and dumping it at a loss, new story is Ontario is negotiating with Quebec to buy power. WTF is wrong with this picture?


Ontario’s Liberal government is talking with Quebec about a plan to purchase power, but insists no deal has been struck.
Colin Nekolaichuk, spokesman for Energy Minister Glenn Thibeault, denied a report in La Presse Monday that said a deal had been inked in which Ontario would purchase eight terawatts of power annually from Quebec over the next 20 years.
That electricity — roughly 6% of the Ontario’s annual supply — would be enough to power 800,000 homes a year.
Any deal must be cost effective for ratepayers and support the government’s goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, Nekolaichuk said.
“While we haven’t yet received an offer that meets those core objectives, we look forward to continued discussions with our Quebec counterparts,” he said in a statement.
The report also said that Ontario would pay 6.12 cents per kilowatt hour with the rates growing at 2% a year over the life of the deal. It also says the agreement would be “pay and take.” Ontario would pay for the entire package annually regardless of how much electricity it uses.
A senior government source told the Toronto Sun that the deal referenced in the La Presse story was an “unsolicited proposal” from Hydro Quebec made in May. When the government looked at the details, it discovered such a deal would cost each ratepayer $30 more a year.
In a letter dated July 27 to Quebec Energy Minister Pierre Arcand, Thibeault rejected the offer, saying it would cost Ontarians more in the long-run.
Progressive Conservative energy critic Todd Smith slammed the apparent deal and demanded to know why the government is talking with Quebec when — by its own admission — Ontario has an over-supply of power.
“At the end of the letter (to Arcand) it says they’re continuing to negotiate with Quebec,” Smith said. “The thing that’s so astonishing to me is why this secret deal is even in negotiations in the first place.”
“Kathleen Wynne and Glenn Thibeault need to categorically reject this deal,” he added.
Ontario Energy Association President Vince Brescia said he’s disappointed the agreement is being hammered out behind closed doors.
“If this particular deal is pursued, Ontarians will not get the benefit of competition to ensure it is the best of all possible options for the province, and companies who have invested in Ontario and have employees here will not get the opportunity to provide alternatives,” he said.

[RedSN]

Quebec offers to sell power to Ontario.
Ontario rejects the offer because it's too expensive.
Todd Smith (PC) "slams" the government saying they should reject the offer.


Am I missing something?

[ZR]

If we indeed have excess power and are dumping it to the US for pennies on the dollar of what we pay for it, why is there any discussion in the first place? Keep in mind, there are producers around Ontario being paid at this very minute not to generate power.

[RedSN]

I guess I misinterpreted the term "unsolicited proposal".
I guess I'm also assuming that the unnamed senior government source is telling the truth ...I'm better now. Just needed my morning coffee.

[ZR]

Progressive Conservative finance critic Vic Fedeli says he’s asked the province’s fiscal watchdog to probe Ontario’s 2016 purchase of hydro from the Quebec government.
PC Finance critic Vic Fedeli said he asked Financial Accountability Officer Stephen LeClair to look into the deal inked between the provinces last Fall. That agreement will see Ontario spend $70 million over seven years to buy electricity from Quebec.
Fedeli said the FAO has agreed to look at the deal and will report back in four months. LeClair’s office said Thursday that it does not publicly comment on its investigations.
Fedeli said the request is important because Ontarians still know few details about the deal.
“What are we paying? They wouldn’t disclose any details,” Fedeli said. “We already produce a surplus of power in Ontario, are we going to just be selling this power back to Quebec at a loss? That’s what it appears.”
Fedeli also said the FAO has agreed to look into any future deals the province signs with Quebec to buy hydro. That could include a rumoured deal, details of which leaked to media this week, of Ontario buying 8 terawatts of power from Quebec.
The Liberal government says that deal was rejected by Energy Minister Glenn Thibeault in July because it would add $30 a year to the average ratepayer’s bill.
Thibeault’s spokesman Colin Nekolaichuk said the government welcomes the FAO’s review of the deal.
“The electricity trade agreement reached last fall with Quebec is helping to make electricity in Ontario more affordable, clean, and reliable,” he said in a statement to the Toronto Sun. “The agreement is projected to reduce electricity costs in Ontario by $70 million over the life of the deal. And by offsetting reliance on peaking natural gas facilities, it also reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 1 million tonnes every year — a significant 25% reduction in emissions from the electricity sector.”

[ZR]

Here we go again, an attempt to make us feel better about hydro rates.


The province is set to unveil a pilot project that will allow hydro customers to tailor on and off-peak billing times to their lifestyles, CTV News Toronto has learned.
Likened to pick-and-pay cable packages, the government is looking to help consumers feel like they are saving money by paying in a way that makes sense for them.
Sources told CTV News Toronto that the new hydro packages in the pilot will be tailored to different lifestyles, with peak and off-peak pricing options that accommodate different schedules for cooking, doing laundry and entertaining.
PHOTOS




A hydro tower is shown in Toronto on Wednesday, November 4, 2015. The Ontario government's plan to lower hydro rates, which have roughly doubled over the last decade, is expected to cost taxpayers $21 billion over the next 30 years, according to the province's budget watchdog. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darren Calabrese)



For example, one option dubbed “The Overnight” would allow a customer to implement a “super off peak rate” that would be much lower between midnight and 6 a.m. That package would benefit shift workers and those who charge electric cars overnight when usage is at its lowest.
An “enhanced” option would allow customers to implement on and off peak prices with a much sharper price discrepancy, so that on-peak would cost about four times as much as off-peak. That option could benefit people who restrict most of their usage to off-peak times.
The “Dynamic P” option would introduce variable peak prices between 3 p.m. and 9 p.m., with all other usage times billed at an off-peak price that is 25 per cent lower than the current off-peak price.
Yet another plan being tested involves “seasonal time of use” where consumers would get a single flat rate in spring and fall, and off and on-peak prices in winter and summer.
The time of use pricing in the plans will be set by the Ontario Energy Board.
The plans are also expected to make use of smart meters, smartphones and smart thermostats so that local distribution companies can warn customers before prices are set to rise, allowing customers to remotely adjust their usage.
The $17.5 million pilot project is set to be announced Tuesday and will begin within the next few months for 18,000 customers in Oshawa, York Region, Barrie and London.
The province will be looking to the pilot to gauge customer acceptance, understanding and willingness to pay for certain price points. If the pilot is successful, the new billing options will eventually be rolled out across the province.
The funding for the pilot project is coming from the conservation fund of the Independent Electricity System Operator. Sources told CTV News Toronto that all the plans are revenue neutral, meaning they won’t bring in extra money to government coffers.

[Stephen06GT]

I did a survey on this a mont or so ago. The plans where so convoluted that I will bet most people will just stick with what they have now.

[ZR]

I have no doubt it was. Yet another fail to draw our attention away from their never ending incompetence.