Donald Jones, P.E., has written periodically on different aspects of the Ontario grid. This latest effort analyzed the recently-released Long Term Energy Plan and finds that there isn’t enough operating reserve to accommodate all the wind energy that the plan envisions. I’ve written similar analyses myself, but Donald does a better job of it than I do.
A couple of points that show Mr. Jones’ analysis is already impacting us – significantly.
The first, which I recently noted on my blog, were 2 records:
December not only showed the highest net exports of any month, but they were about a third higher than the previous record
January 1st had the lowest daily average HOEP, at under negative $20/MWh
I’ve updated some graphs elsewhere on the blog that show both the leveling off of annualized demand in September, and the surge in production since then (which did coincide with 4 coal units being taken out of service), and that show my estimates of the costs of those exports to Ontario’s electricity consumers.
http://morecoldair.blogspot.com/2010/11/economics-lab-blogs-on-market.html