Ontario’s IESO ineptitude in managing Ontario’s electricity supply is displayed in an article from the Lucknow Sentinel, IESO’s designation of Huron-Kinloss as potential host for green energy projects forces township to reaffirm its no wind turbine stance.

The local council noted a change in the IESO’s classification of the area’s transmission capability in determining where to force more industrial wind turbines (the same change I posted on April 14th)

“We can say that we are not a willing host, but what does that mean at the end of the day? Nothing because the contracts are let out by the IESO,” Twolan said, following the council meeting. “We’ve always said we’re not a willing host. We passed that a long, long time ago, but the new map that came out, it changes all the time and we had no input into that. And it doesn’t matter that we passed that we’re a non-willing host, they can still put that in there.”

Of 5 recent, and totally needless, industrial wind contracts awarded by the IESO, 3 went to communities that had actively announced themselves opposed.

So why the change in status?

Chuck Farmer, the IESO director of stakeholder and public affairs, said… “I do understand their concern and I do want to stress that this is an assessment of transmission capabilities — so an assessment of the system ability and not a statement of any community stance,” Farmer said in a phone interview on April 27. He said the redesignation occurred because previous projects slated for the area are now no longer moving forward, which freed up space on the system. “That creates an indication there maybe room on the transmission system to connect some more projects in the area,” he said. Farmer said he couldn’t elaborate on the disbanded wind projects previously set for the area.

This doesn’t suggest Farmer is capable of elaborating on any subject.

He uses the same logic as what my friend Parker Gallant calls Lucy math – you plan on spending what you don’t have on something you don’t need, decide you don’t need it after-all, and spend the fictitious savings from the decision on something else you don’t need.

The area is a stupid place for more industrial wind, and, unlike a well-paid IESO drone, I can support my claim.

The curtailment of contracted electricity supply in Ontario is growing rapidly, and nowhere have I found it growing as quickly as my data analysis shows it occurring in the IESO’s “Bruce” zone.

The zone itself is a mystery to the IESO, and certainly beyond. A recent addition to the projects in the geographic area is the Armow wind farm, but the IESO doesn’t consider it as located in a Bruce zone, but a southwest zone.

The curtailment in the Bruce zone has spiked, with the presence of Armow (in the southwest zone).

In fact, over the past 6 months the IESO has been curtailing enough wind and nuclear power to run about 400,000 homes – and mostly the curtailment is from this area south to Lake Erie and west to the St. Clair river. Much of the area where curtailment is happening is where Chuck Farmer says there’s some space on the grid because, and here I’ll editorialize, they had planned on screwing things up worse than they have.

Maybe that’s unfair. One section of a ruling of a NAFTA case show both Armow and K2 as lowly ranked projects prior to attaining their contracts – in fact, that’s exactly why they were constructed:

By August 2011, the Korean Consortium had acquired two low-ranked projects in the Bruce region that never stood a chance of obtaining a FIT Contract, but were nevertheless granted PPAs under GEIA [Green Energy Investment Agreement, a.k.a. the Samsung deal]. First, the Korean Consortium acquired the Armow project from Acciona, which was ranked 21st in the Bruce region. Second, the Korean Consortium acquired the K2 wind project from Capital Power, which was ranked 24th in the Bruce region.

The message is that Armow and K2 were purchased cheaply by Samsung because Samsung was guaranteed transmission space and using it up with lowly ranked projects blocked better projects from other suppliers.

Funny how more capacity is seen as existing immediately following the conclusion of that NAFTA case.

What sleeze – and sleeze seems all around Ontario’s renewable energy scene lately. The IESO itself has suspended its microFIT shenanigans, and the Six Nations have turfed a reportedly more-than-double billing lawyer that had handled many, many, many green deals for them.

The wasted output in the winter is but one indication of the stupidity of the wind experiment on Huron’s eastern shore. In the heat of summer, I’ve found the turbines are often consuming as much, or more, power as they are producing.

notes:

I regularly update the spreadsheet for Wind Curtailment by zone, and occassionally re-write the algorithm that produces the estimates (which changes the history)

The same comments are applicable to my spreadsheet of curtailment estimates.