Ontario wasted $1 billion worth of clean electricity in 2016, according to the province’s professional engineers.

The Ontario Society of Professional Engineers, a non-partisan body, which represents the province’s engineers, says it has crunched government hydro numbers from 2016 and they show that 7.6 terawatt-hours of clean hydro went down the drain that year. That’s equal to the amount required to power 760,000 homes – or $1 billion worth of electricity – said the group’s past president Paul Acchione.

“This represents a 58% increase in the amount of clean electricity that Ontario wasted in 2015 which was 4.8 terawatt hours,” he said. “All while the province continues to export more than two-million homes’ worth of electricity to neighbouring jurisdictions for a price less than it costs to produce.”

Acchione said the province is wasting the power through a practice called “curtailment.” It means that when the province’s hydro generators produce power consumers don’t need, and it can’t be exported, they have to dump it.

“It’s when we tell our dams to let the water spill over the top, our nuclear generators to release steam to their condensers and our wind turbines not to turn even when it’s windy,” he said. “The numbers...show that Ontario’s cleanest source of power is literally going down the drain because we’re producing too much of it.”

Jonathan Hack, the president and chairman of the OSPE board, said the group provided the analysis to all three parties at Queen’s Park. They’d like to see engineers more intimately involved in policy creation, because at the moment, technical decisions about the province’s hydro system have been politicized, he said.

“We need to involve engineers in policy making decisions,” Hack said. “Engineers right now are being asked to be involved only when the implementation occurs on these policies and that is too late.”

Progressive Conservative energy critic Todd Smith, who hosted the group at Queen’s Park Thursday, said the government has been ignoring experts on the file for years. That led to the creation of the Green Energy Act, he added.

“The first thing that they need to do is stop having politicians design our energy and our electrical system and allow experts to provide their input,” he said.

Smith said the Tories will introduce a plan to address the systematic problems in the hydro system later this year or “in early 2018.”

Colin Nekolaichuk, spokesman for energy minister Glenn Thibeault, slammed the Tories for voting against the government’s 25% hydro rate reduction plan and not having a plan of their own. He did not address the analysis of the OSPE in a statement to the Toronto Sun.

“As OSPE acknowledged in the media studio this morning, our government works closely with their organization and other stakeholders, and takes their input seriously,” Nekolaichuk said.

sjeffords@postmedia.com