Ontario Power Rates Headed for #1 by 2013 | Tom Adams

A great breakdown of where Ontario's electricity policy is taking us:

Ontario Power Rates Headed for #1 by 2013 | Tom Adams Energy - ideas for a smarter grid:

The Ontario Government’s Long Term Energy Plan (LTEP) issued in the Fall of 2010 forecast that monthly residential costs would rise from $114/800kWh in 2010 to $167/800kWh in 2015 — a 46% nominal increase or a 33% inflation-adjusted increase.Here are examples of new cost pressures driving up rates that have developed since the LTEP was issued:

• The LTEP did not include Global Adjustment (GA) cost shifting. GA cost shifting will add about $3.50/MWh to residential rates by 2015 or 2%.

• The LTEP did not break out its price projection by cost element, so we can’t easily track against actuals. However, the LTEP did provide an illustrative TOU bill for June 2011. The actual TOU rates last June were higher by 8%-12% depending on the time slice.

• The LTEP assumed that wind would provide 10% of system energy in 2030 and solar would provide 1.5%. The IESO is currently assuming 6800/7900MW of wind by the end of 2015/17 respectively. That would translate into 12% of the LTEP’s forecasted demand in 2015 and 14% in 2017. This level of production is substantially higher than the OPA was publicly discussing last fall. Solar also appears to be far ahead of the LTEP outlook. Only a fraction of this power will be delivered to the grid but almost all of it will be paid for by consumers.

The delivered cost of residential power by 2015 appears to be on track for rates in the order of $180/800kWh

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