July 2012 Ontario Electricity Exports Bulletin - and Rebuttal

It's the time of the month we play the Energy Ministry Said, Scott Said

July 2012 Ontario Electricity Exports Bulletin:

"Ontario's electricity market generated over $16.5 million in June by exporting electricity to other states and provinces, bringing total net export revenues to almost $110 million this year."

That's nice.
And expenses on purchasing the power to export?

In June, for instance, that's on net exports of ~804,391MWh - which would mean exports were sold at an average rate of $20.50/MWh.

The lowest purchase price for power was probably for OPG's non-regulated hydro assets, which would have received about $23.14/MWh.   The exports are therefore not only sold at a loss even if they are considered to come from the cheapest supply, but removing the net export value from OPG's unregulated hydro production doesn't leave much output for the owners of OPG = aka the people of Ontario.

The people of Ontario will pay a little over $80/MWh.

The government's release notes revenues since 2006 (without referencing expenses).  The largest year for revenues was, by far, 2008 - after which pricing for exports fell off a cliff while Ontario's pricing became dominated by the Global Adjustment charge.  Because only Ontarians pay global adjustment charges, the market segment price has a notable divergence between export segments, and local.

The graph is from my data site - which is not structured for quick loading  ... but if you want a whole lot of graphing, and some numbers, I have a preliminary monthly report here.

I also break down costs on another page, and in June I'd estimate .45 cents/kWh of the charges for Ontario ratepayers is attributable to the cost of exporting.  As a point of reference, the debt retirement charge is .7 cents/kWh.
On a positive note, most recent months have exports more costly than that.