Wind Power Forum Notes: Generating More Wind Power in Ontario

by John Wilson
October 14, 2003

Speaker - Paul Gipe, wind power expert

Typical Household Energy Usage

Texas 14,000 kwh/year
California 6,500 kwh/year
Europe 3,000 kwh/year

Recent blackout in eastern North America was caused by "brittle power". Wind power can boost flexibility near loads reducing the risk of such a catastrophic cascading failure.

We, here in Toronto, are on the cusp of a movement now that we have a large symbolic wind turbine in downtown Toronto.

Wind turbines generate 70% of the time. With distribution they are can be generating almost 100% of the time.

Germany leads in wind power generation with 3,000/year MW in 2002. They are moving towards 20,000 MW by 2010.
Spain is at 1,000 MW/year.
North America is at 5,000 MW/year
Europe is at 24,000 MW/year

Wind power provides jobs for about 60,000 people worldwide.

Why is wind power leading the renewable energy charge now?
- economies of scale
- work well
- first 4 months pays back energy required to build them
- acceptance through community ownership

Joyce Mclean - Toronto Hydro

On August 14th, during the blackout, 61 billion watts of capacity were lost at 4:10pm in 9 seconds. Ontario imports 2000 MW from the United States as operating reserve.

Ontario system - IMO is primarily financially driven.
We have 28,900 kms of transmission lines.
94 generating stations
31,500 MW total
4 nuclear plants producing 10,836 kw

Electricity usage
- 5.5% increase in usage May 2 - Apr 3
- imports up to 33%
- Consumption records consistently broken
- August Price / Mwh - Commodity $62.18, Wholesale $72.34 or 6.218 kwh
- Currently price capped at 4.3kwh for retail consumers
- Hidden Tax Bill $600 million stated in the media
- Netherlands consumers pay 22 cents kwh - five times as much as us

Commercial Towers were able to save 30% after blackout.

Problems that require non-polluting, renewable energy sources.
- 2,030 premature deaths in Ontario in 2003 and $1.2 billion in health costs

Current barriers to conservation
- OEB
- sell more, more revenue
- no way to recoup costs of conservation

Green - barriers to green power development
- 93.5% of government subsidy supplied to fossil/nuclear
- 7.2% renewable