Busting Myths Around Claim That Wind Energy is Both Reliable and Cost-competitive

The wind industry was built on lies and runs on subsidies. Spin doctors, practised in the fine art of deception, have been gainfully employed for almost 30 years in an effort to turn night into day, in order to keep the subsidies coming and to prevent them from ever being cut.

Politicians and a gullible press recant ludicrous lines such as the Windy Hill wind farm will power XX hundred thousand homes and that wind power is free and getting cheaper all the time.

Another piece of propaganda that’s been copping a punishing lately is the claim that wind power is more reliable than fossil fuelled power generation, generally, and coal-fired power, in particular.

STT took some glee in debunking statements to that effect made by Victoria’s deluded Premier, Daniel Andrews here: Deranged & Delusional: Victorian Government Claims Wind & Solar More Reliable Than Fossil Fuels

In this post, Parker Gallant smashes similar nonsensical claims made by Canada’s wind industry spin doctors, CanWEA.

Shortly after Ontario’s Ministry of the Environment Conservation and Parks revoked the REA (Renewal Energy Approval) for the North Stormont, Nation Rise wind turbine project, CanWEA (Canadian Wind Energy Association) reacted. They issued an apoplectic press release which beyond suggesting the sky is falling, made the claim that wind energy is both “reliable and cost-competitive”!

Anyone who has taken the time to read any of my rants over the past 10 years will know I have pointed out the fallacies of CanWEA’s claims on numerous occasions with two recent ones pointing out wind’s tendency in Ontario to generate energy when it’s not needed. That bad habit creates surplus generation that must be curtailed (and paid for) or accepted into the grid and then causes the HOEP (hourly Ontario electricity price) to fall. One should suspect those surplus MWh (megawatt hours) it generates causes IESO to sell off unneeded power to our neighbours in NY, Michigan, etc. at rock bottom prices.

Those two recent articles mentioned above highlighted five December days of additional costs of almost $40 million caused by wind generation. That generation brought absolutely no benefit to Ontario ratepayers but we were obliged to pay the costs due to the generous contracts awarded after the GEA (Green Energy Act) was passed in 2009 by the previous Ontario led Liberal government.

The existing TX (grid connected) industrial wind turbines (IWT) operating in Ontario over December 30th and 31st along with January 1, 2020 were humming and collectively generated 155,228 MWh of grid accepted energy and their owners were also paid for 81,250 MWh (rounded) for curtailed generation. The costs of the foregoing at $120/MWh for curtailed wind and $135/MWh for TX connected generation produced income of approximately $30.7 million for the owners over the three days or about 20 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) accepted into the grid. One should also assume OPG were obliged to spill water and were paid for doing so and the gas plants were paid to idle to back up both intermittent wind and solar. None of those costs are included in the 20 cents/kWh we ratepayers were forced to absorb.

The reference to selling our surplus generation for pennies is not an exaggeration as the average sales price over the three days was .39 cents a MWh. Remember there are 1000 kWh in just one MWh!

IESO sold off 201,936 MWh* in three days for pennies while Ontario ratepayers picked up the costs of wind energy (grid accepted and curtailed) of 236,478 MWh. Its not a stretch to note, without wind energy net exports would have been less and the HOEP would have been much higher than the average it achieved for those three days. The $78,755.00 at .39/MWh earned by IESO from the export of those 201,936 MWh fell very short of the cost to generate them! Using the all-in average Ontario commodity rate for 2019 of $111.80 MWh as estimated by my friend Scott Luft those exports cost us Ontario ratepayers in excess of $22.5 million.

Without the unneeded wind energy and its cost of $30.7 million, Ontario’s nuclear plants, running at their current capability level could have provided 834,000 MWh over three days. Hydro running at only 50% of its capacity could have provided a minimum of 282,000 MWh which collectively would have been more (1,116,000 MWh) than Ontario’s demand (1,052,000 MWh) over those three days.

The time has come for CanWEA to do an about face and admit: wind energy is both “unreliable and costly”!

*What 2.7 million average Ontario households would consume in three days.

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