This is a detailed reply to a comment.
A/ I don’t know whom you have used for your ‘average’ home, but the OPA has stated that the average home (dwelling) in Ontario consumes 1,000 kWhrs/mo, NOT 3,500 or 3,000.
Our 1,300 sq.ft. bungalow (3 older adults and no air conditioning), consumes ~600 kWhr/mo. as a year-round average (and that includes me falling asleep on the couch watching TV).
All power sources have a metric known as the Capacity Value. That’s the output of a power source as a percent of its rated capacity when demand is within 10% of peak. The viability of all power sources is based on that number. I used a 2000 sqr ft home of a friend of mine. He has a normal home: pool, A/C and 4 adults. I took 4 years his monthly bills, and took the highest consumption for each month. Thus this is real world data. Just because yours is low does not mean you are average. You have to compare the output to the maximum consumption because the power source has to be able to match that consumption. Otherwise, if you just match it to the average consumption, and a month is higher than average, then you are sunk. Thus, the entire grid is geared for the highest possible consumption.
The OPA sets our cheapest Winter rates on <1,000, and
our cheapest Summer rates on <600, to encourage us to use less air conditioning.
-w-
Do a check on how many lives have been saved due to personal A/C since the 1950’s. It’s staggering, a HUGE drop in heat related deaths since then (some 75%). We are going backwards and allowing more people to die? Is that what a modern civilization is about?
B/ The current average rate Ontarians pay -just for the power itself- is $.07 (NOT $.05 as above). However, to calculate what the homeowner pays, simply divide the bill by the actual number of kWhrs consumed as listed on bill (not including the Line Loss factor). You’ll find it’s ~$.17 /kWhr to have it Delivered (and pay the Stranded Debt, HST, etc). Would you mind re-doing your figures for us?
You’ll find that the homeowner above is consuming far less than 3,500 and 3,000/mo. and therefore their FIT or microFIT produces More than they consume.
You are comparing apples to oranges. Solar produces power at a fixed cost to us, and an income to the owner. One must compare that to the consumption (which is the rate over that 4 years for that person) only, those other billing components would be the same for solar or non-solar.
However, there are 4 points to remember:
– OPG (and perhaps the Ontario government?) did Not need to go to the bank and borrow any money to build new generation, as they have done with Big Becky, and must soon do with our ungodly and always-over-budget Nuclear plants that provide ~65% of Ontario’s power at the moment. All money for Solar and Big Wind is borrowed privately with the promise of a 20-year contract rate. Remember, the bill for the Nuclear portion of the Green Energy Act TRIPLED in June 2009 from the original budget of $26B to $87B … at the moment ….
Then they should charge the consumer the same rate as nukes, .05c then.
– microFIT allows ‘smaller’ people to invest in Ontario energy, not just huge corporations.
Well, there is a misunderstanding right there. When one “invests” in something, it is for wealth creation products to be built and sold to the public. Power produced from solar are not. Because power charged to consumers is not wealth creation, it’s wealth leaching. Second, the “investor” is getting MORE income compared to their competitors. A true investment would be on a level playing field. That means they should NOT be getting the subsidies. It’s unfair. The third aspect is this is a captive audience. I cannot call up my local farmer with panels and sign a contract with him to supply power. In other words, have people who have panels fairly compete with each other and the rest of the system. Since that is NOT happening, then this “investment” is nothing of the sort. It is nothing more than greedy pigs at the government tit, with us consumers providing the milk.
– Even if a 10KW microFIT Solar generates only enough for 1-3 homes, it still means that OPG has less power to produce. Caclulate the average reduction with even 10,000 homes on microFIT. And the power is produced Where it’s needed (with little no Line Loss), as well as When it’s needed during the day.
First off, OPG doesn’t need the power. We have been in a power glut since 2005. All the wind and solar is being dumped to the States at a loss to Ontario consumers. THAT IS FACT!
I, and the rest of the paying customers, don’t have a problem with solar per se, it’s the COST. You have 10,000 of these around the province and rates will skyrocket. That will kill the economy and drive more people into energy poverty. You want to build a solar array, the go for it. But YOU find customers willing to pay the price you demand, don’t ram it down our throats!
The other aspect of this you are completely missing is the power these panels produced compared to the demand curve. The lowest daytime sun light is Dec 21. Your 10,000 panels will not produce enough power then to run the homes as it does in the summer. But less than 1/4 the homes. Thus to meet the number of homes these panels supply in the summer, one would need 4 times the panels, or 40,000 to meet the same number of homes. Except that is still too short. People use more power in winter, so you must have even MORE than 40,000 panels to meet winter time demand.
You people promoting solar and wind do not understand the hourly dynamics of power consumption. What you produce over the year is irrelevant. The most important aspect of ANY power source is its ability to provide power when it is needed the most.
Wind and solar will NEVER provide baseline power, that leaves it in the realm of being capable of providing power when demand changes. Wind and solar fundamentally CANNOT do that — ever. No matter how much you believe in your ideological bent on “renewable” power, you CANNOT change the laws of physics.
– Solar and Wind don’t cause asthma and alzheimers (mercury), and that’s predicted to reduce our soaring Health costs by $3B.
-w-
Bogus number. Site a reference backing up that claim.
That has been debunked:
- Koop, Gary M., Ross R. McKitrick and Lise A. Tole (2010) Air Pollution, Economic Activity and Respiratory Illness: Evidence from Canadian Cities, 1974-1994 Environmental Modeling and Software , DOI:10.1016/j.envsoft.2010.01.010.
- McKitrick, Ross R. (2006) Why Did US Air Pollution Decline After 1970? Empirical Economics , 33(3): 491-513, DOI:10.1007/s00181-006-0111-4.
- McKitrick, Ross (2006). The Politics of Pollution: Party Regimes and Air Quality in Canada Canadian Journal of Economics 39(2), May 2006, 604-620.
How many people will be in hospitals because they can’t bear the summer heat because they can’t afford A/C? Add that to your health costs buddy!
There Are problems with Solar and Big Wind concerning fluctuating and semi-predictable production, but they are being solved by STORAGE (some methods already exist, and some are being developped).
-w-
Nonsense. There is NOT ONE large-scale viable storage ability in existence. Every one tried uses more power to get the power back out than what goes into the storage. You also have to increase by many times the number of power sources to put power into storage. Example is a home off the grid with battery storage.
Home uses X amount of power during the day, so the panels during the day have to provide X amount of power with Nx number of panels. But at night in the winter, the home uses 3X of daytime power, so you must have 3X of storage. Now to charge those batteries and run your home, you need 4 TIMES as many panels now. Now on cloudy days, you need to have ability to power your home from just the batteries, all day. So for each expected cloudy day in a row, you need 4x times those days batteries, and 4x times those panels to charge those batteries on sunny days.
Now add to this that the batteries do not return 100% of the power, but something around 75%. So now you need 25% more panels to make up that short fall.
So if one home needs 235 panels to power it, which supplies only 25% winter power, then you need 4 times 235 and add 25% or 1200 panels to run a home every day in the winter with batter storage. But we can have 5 days with no sun in the winter. So you really need at least 6,000 panels, to charge batteries to get a home through that cloudy week. Now how much are these panels each? $1000? You have 6 MILLION to spend on panels and batteries?
So this is the biggest hurdle to storage which will NEVER be solvable because of the costs.
Finally, the real problem with Ontario energy is going to be COST (Solar & Big wind are part of this, but so is always-over-budget NUCLEAR). I’ve heard of a mine in north-western Ontario where they ship the ore to Tennessee for smelting & refining because the TVA charges only ~$.06/kWhr vs their Ontario hydro bill of ~$.16/kWhr. If we can’t compete with the USA -our largest trading partner- where will we work, how will we live?
Well, that’s just rich! You complain about the costs, yet you promote the FIT program of the Green Energy Act that is driving up the costs!! It’s those wind turbines and solar panels that is going to drive the cost up even more.
You just confirmed that there are more jobs lost because of “green” energy than jobs created because of it. Thank you for the hypocrisy.
Check out what is happening in the UK and EU. They are driving themselves into poverty, while making Rent Seekers rich in the process.
