Friday, November 15, 2013

Wind Records Continue to be Set in Ontario - gutting market prices

I blogged on wind records Wednesday, and by the end of the day the hourly output record I noted, from the industrial wind turbines (IWT's) connected to the IESO grid, was broken 5 times.

Yesterday, these IWT's produced ~37,685MWh - a new daily record, despite a likelihood production was curtailed at times.

The average IWT production for the first 14 days of the month is ~1,015 MW.
In the peak demand month of July, the average was 312MW.


Coupled with high nuclear and hydro availability, the abundance of shoulder-season supply is causing record low pricing.

The system operator banned negatively priced exports 13 months ago, which is preventing the Hourly Ontario Energy Price (HOEP) from dropping far below $0/MWh, but the price was negative 77 hours during the first 14 days of November  (23% of all hours).

On Thursday November 14th, the wind record was accompanied by an average HOEP of $.5.90/MWh (0.59 cents/kWh) - lower than the monthly average of $10.52/MWh ( a little of 1 cent/kWh), but not by much.

The current record low monthly average HOEP is $15.45; for average wind output it's 785MW.

Both look likely to fall this November - pushing the global adjustment charge to a record high.