Wind power - the great money pit

Wind power in Ontario has been a major component of the Liberal's agenda, especially under Dalton McGuinty. Tree-huggers claim it's the best thing since sliced bread, manufacturers of wind-power related equipment claim additional environmental benefits. Basically, everybody thinks wind power is just super.

Is it?

Short anwer: no.

Long answer: it depends on how it is managed and integrated into the system. There are some green benefits, of that there is no doubt. Once built, wind generators don't consume anything meaningful other than wind. This means virtually zero input costs, and little to no emissions. Wow, great huh?

However, these benefits have been more than lost in Ontario due to the stupidly generous contracts handed out to the wind generation companies. Did you know, for example, that if a wind generator is producing electricty, this power is guaranteed to be purchased, regardless of whether or not it is needed? Did you also know that the rates being paid for this power are about FIVE times what hydro power gets in this province?

Even better: did you know that often times, we are spilling water at our hydro plants (meaning that instead of using the water flowing down the river and through the power plant, we're just spilling it around/over the plant, essentially wasting that water) in order to be able to accomodate this (very expensive) wind power? So in a nutshell, we are not generating hydro power (even worse, spilling water), which would have cost around $0.03 per kWh, in order to run wind power, which costs an estimated $0.15 per kWh. Man, what a bargain. What a great deal McGuinty got us.

Now, to be fair, this doesn't always happen. There are times when we are running as much hydro power as we can (not spilling water) while also running all the wind power that is being produced. But the majority of the time, wind power is generated overnight (when we least need it), which is, coincidentally, the time when power on the open market is generally cheapest. So, at the time of day when power should normally be cheapest, we are not only not running cheap hydro power, we're spilling water, all to accomodate very expensive wind power (that we don't need).

I don't know about you, but I'm extremely excited and pleased about this. Who wouldn't want to pay five times the going rate for electricity? Especially when you replace cheap green power with expensive wind power, the deal seems just THAT much better. Really folks, why would you pay $0.03 for green hydro power when, thanks to the Liberals and McGuinty, you get to pay $0.15 for green wind power?

Have you ever looked at your power bill and wondered what the "global adjustment" charge is? It's basically what you pay the wind generators to make up for the difference between what their generation actually costs and what the market rate of power is (as well as other fees that need to be collected). For example, there are times when wind is generating and the current hourly price of electricity in Ontario is hovering around $0. Yes, that's right, while you're paying $0.07 + charges for power at 2am, the market price is $0.00. Well, during this time, wind is producing power and getting $0.00 from the market for it. But they've gotten a contract from the government that guarantees them $0.15, so the diffrence has to come from somewhere and someone. That someone is you, and that somewhere is the "global adjustment" charge on your bill. Are you pleased yet?

You'll often hear wind proponents state things like "last year, wind power in Ontario generated X amount of power". True, but what they don't tell you is this power was useless and not needed. They don't tell you that in order to generate that power, hydro power (that would otherwise have been generated) was scaled back. In other words, instead of generating power with hydro, we're using wind. Wind power was supposed to replace coal generation, according to the McGuinty Liberals. What's ACTUALLY happened is that wind power has replaced hydro power and nuclear power. Are we any greener? Not really. Poorer? You bet.

So the next time you see McGuinty, or any Liberal for that matter, be sure to thank them. Thanks to them, our power bills are amongst the highest in North America, we've spent billions of dollars in subsidies and guaranteed contracts, and all we've really managed to do is replace green, cheap hydro with green, expensive wind.

Like I said, a great deal!