Reader Beware!

This is a guest blog by Robert Knox

Go to the Ontario Wind Resistance web site, that is the former Wind Concerns Ontario web site. Scroll down to the bottom of the page. You will find a feed that appears to be connected to Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator’s (IESO) web site. The feed reads as follows, with the numbers changing hourly:

Ontario Wind Energy Production (IESO)

Total demand: 18250 MW (4:00 PM EST - Dec. 19, 2011) ** Total generation: 18978 MW (Dec. 19 - 15:00-16:00) ** Excess generation: 728 MW ** WIND: 1003 MW: 5.5% of demand, 5.3% of generation, 137.8% of excess generation

IESO Wind Tracker

If you click on the header it will take you to a link to a web site “aweo.org-Industrial Wind Energy Opposition” which turns out to operated by an American wind opponent, Eric Rosenbloom.

The “feed” is made to look like part of the official IESO web site but it is not. “Deceit” you cry. “Liar! Liar! Pants on fire” you mutter.

You would be wrong.

All the information about demand and generation is correct including the level of electricity Ontario’s system generated between 3:00 and 4:00 PM on December 19, 2001.  The difference is that IESO doesn’t monitor wind generation as a portion of “excess” or “shortfalls”. It is irrelevant. The IESO only cares that the supply is there when Ontario’s consumers need it.

IESO balances the “[…] supply of and demand for electricity in Ontario and then directs its flow across the province's transmission lines.” It doesn’t matter the source of the electricity, only that the system is in balance. Of course, IESO cares passionately about “excesses” and “shortfalls” within the system.

So what’s going on?

Wind opponents, including Ontario Wind Resistance, Wind Concerns Ontario and aweo.org-Industrial Wind Energy Opposition want you to believe that wind generation is a problem, that it is not reducing carbon emissions, that is effectively waste.

They also want you to think that, somehow, wind creates the “excesses” and “shortfalls”, that they wouldn’t exist but for wind.

Of course, that isn’t true.

What is true is what this site said recently: electricity produced by wind turbines is helping to reduce carbon emissions from Ontario’s power system using a “fuel” that is totally renewable and costs nothing.

What’s wrong with that?

Nothing, but wind opponents don’t want you to know it.