On June 9th, 2016, the IESO operated Ontario’s electricity market, such as it is, hit the second highest Hourly Ontario Energy Price (HOEP) in its history. The conditions leading to this record pricing hadn’t been seen since June 8th, 2016.

Those conditions, sun and wind in the afternoon disappearing with sunset, combined with a simply asinine time-of-use pricing scheme operating under a political constraint of starting “Off-Peak” pricing at 7 p.m.

On Thursday, June 9th, the price moved from $0 per megawatt-hour ($/MWh) from 2 to 3 p.m. (hour 14), to $1619.6 from 8-9 pm and back down below $0 from 11 p.m to midnight.

Keeping in mind all my figures of embedded, or distribution connected (Dx), and curtailed supply, are estimates, here’s how wind and solar generator output (including curtailed) looked, by hour, on the 9th.

It’s a stunning move in the market rate. The HOEP is an average of the 12 5-minute market control prices (MCP) each hour. During the near record hour the MCP moved from only $23.15/MWh (2.3 cents) up to the maximum allowed in the IESO market, $2000/MWh. By the 11th MCP interval of the next hour (around 9:50 pm), the rate was back to $13.63/MWh.

The day before the IESO also saw a price spike, on a lesser scale, at the same time, and for the same reasons:

I suggest the price is driven by the need for more supply from transmission-connected (Tx) generators, many of which would have operational constraints (such as minimum run times). The big issue here is not the need for supply from other generators, it’s the need for it for so little time.

Considering nuclear and hydro generators provided a base supply (to meet base load) of about 14,000 megawatts on the 9th, with hydro the ability to deliver another 2,000 megawatts beyond that, the need to supplement that generation was not readily apparent on the 9th, or on the 8th - ignoring sales to export markets.

The price spike looks like a matter of the IESO’s ability to utilize the spasmodic output of wind and solar generators - which is probably an ability it shares with most of the world.

The key attribute of the IESO seems to be in avoiding recognition of their shortcomings, which includes promoting those who pander to the wind industry, focusing stupidly on conservation during a period with far more pressing concerns - including the IESO’s inability to produce meaningful reporting on distribution connected solar output.

Postscript

A couple of hours after posting this I looked at the IESO site and noticed a new Stakeholder engagement was announced June 9th: Enabling System Flexibility



The IESO has identified an emerging need for the ability to schedule resources capable of responding within a short time frame in order to manage forecast uncertainty in the real-time energy market.



Just now eh?

One writer I noticed before I started blogging wrote this almost 6 years ago:

In periods of high demand and in periods of low demand dispatchable and hot standby gas generation will be powered down as far as is prudent for grid reliability as more (FIT) wind generation comes on to the grid and then it is wind that has to be curtailed, not gas. It would be the IESO’s job to cobble together enough gas (combined cycle and simple cycle) and hydro generation to be available if, say, 5,000 megawatts or even 8,000 megawatts of wind decided to quit – wind has a propensity to fade at the same time over a wide geographical area. If this cannot be done some (FIT) wind would have to be kept off line. It is the timely availability of this gas and hydro generation that will set the limit on wind penetration on the Ontario grid.



I admire the writer of this enough to try and keep all his work together at the Donald Jones articles site.

Another opinion I’ve learned to value wrote on Twitter, in linking to this post:

Symptom of overbuilt fly by sun generation keeping load responsive generation offline. Too much of a “good” thing?



The IESO also announced it will work with another distant planet (MaRS) for an Energy Leader Summit for May 2017.

uh huh

the spreadsheet with this post’s graphics