Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Don't think now: Another Time-of-use Pricing report in Ontario

The Ontario Energy Board (OEB) has posted a report from favoured consultant Navigant on the impacts of time-of-use pricing which accompanied the roll-out of smart meters in Ontario.

From the letter sent along with the report:
A Board commissioned report (the “Report”) prepared by Navigant Consulting Ltd., entitled “Time of Use Rates in Ontario – Part 1: Impact Analysis” was posted on the Board’s website today...
Navigant’s analysis shows that residential consumers reduced their summer on- peak and mid-peak usage by an average of -3.3% and -2.2%, respectively. Off- peak weekday and weekend consumption increased an average 1.2% and 1.9%, respectively. There was minimal conservation response attributable to TOU rates in the summer period.
  • • Winter residential demand decreased in all TOU periods. These reductions ranged from -3.9% to -3.4% in the mid-peak and on-peak periods, respectively. Off-peak weekday and weekend consumption was also reduced by -2.5% and -1.2%, respectively. These estimates indicate that some of the load reduction could be attributed to conservation in response to TOU rates in the winter period.
  • The findings for the general service customers are weaker than the residential results and are statistically significant only for the summer mid-peak period....
  • Residential annual commodity costs, i.e., energy only charges, per customer are estimated to be approximately $12 lower because of load shifting and conservation driven by TOU pricing.
I'm not surprised general service customers are concentrating on their businesses and not the power schemes of government, but Navigant doesn't speculate about that explantion (it speculates about bad data).

I've been a critic of anything the Ontario government has applied the term "smart" too, and this report is another good example why.

In 2013 the OEB blessed another cost (Smart Metering Charge) be added to Ontarians' bills to pay for a smart data repository - a charge of $0.79/Month.  So there goes $9.48 of that $12 "annual commodity costs" saving - another $2.50 is probably eaten up by movements to monthly billings sent 2 weeks earlier than the old bi-monthly bills.  Those are just the charges since Parker Gallant and I wrote Liberal shell game – smart meters and conservation

5 recommendations from the Navigant report
  • Continue to collect residential smart meter data (post TOU)...
  • Collect more customers’ data from each LDC...
  • Collect more GS customers’ data from different LDCs...
  • On-going impact evaluation will need to rely on elasticity estimation...
  • Undertake an on-going survey of customer behaviours and attitudes...
Next Steps
Part 2 of this study – an analysis of a number of alternative TOU scenarios chosen by OEB staff –appears in a separate report. The principal purpose of Part 1 of this study (this report) was to deliverestimates of customer price-responsiveness (i.e., elasticities) that drive Part 2.
In today's Toronto it seems the purpose of all data is to point a need for more data;
of all reports to point to the need for more reports.

That might provide a cultural explanation why so many Toronto residents are experiencing their second prolonged period without electricity in the past 8 months.

3 comments:

  1. ..a cultural explanation why so many Toronto residents are experiencing
    their second prolonged period without electricity in the past 8 months."

    A verbose euphemism for systemic corruption. The public is now hostage to government which has no moral compass.

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  2. In today's Toronto it seems the purpose of all data is to point a need for more data;
    of all reports to point to the need for more reports.



    This is right up there with "head office is a place with a very large budget where if you want any work done you must pay extra" and "universities are a place with a large amount of knowledge where if you want to learn something they have to do more research".

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ramblings from someone who had no power for three days follows:
    I have come to the conclusion that TH treats these outages as a way to achieve the conservation targets established by the Energy Minister if TOU pricing isn't working. Can't wait to see their report to the OEB and their explanation on how they achieved their targets. What they should put in is, "we waited until the last possible moment to declare that the weather might be a problem (as we did with the flooding event) and by doing so we knew the delay to put people back on the grid would take extra time and benefit us by achieving targeted conservation." "In that way I can get a bigger bonus because I achieved the target."
    Tony played the role by coming out Sunday morning and declaring the weather was "catastrophic" and the reason why well over 300,000 customers were without power and it would take 72 hours to bring them back!

    ReplyDelete