Review of the Review of the AG Report

Wind Blog

Glen Estill

March 7, 2012

Ontario Highlands Friends of Wind has released a devastating review on the Auditor General’s “report” on renewable energy procurement in Ontario. The review’s primary author, Malcolm Hamilton, a retired management consultant from McKinsey, and retired wind developer, exposes many new flaws in the Auditor’s “report”. A summary can be found here.

I was especially impressed with how Hamilton described the top level objectives, that were totally missed by the Auditor General. Hamilton points out that the government struggles to control Ontario Hydra, which replaced the previous difficult to control Ontario Hydro. Simply put, implementing change in the change resistant culture of the IESO, Hydro One, the OPA, OEB etc., is hugely challenging. This is something the Auditor General didn’t even address.

The review is the most devastating commentary I have seen, drawing attention to the Auditor’s lack of references, blind acceptance of discredited report from overseas, many funded by fossil or climate deniers, and even lack of understanding of costs. After all, the Auditor General used a number of platitudes on cost, without publishing why they thought something was expensive. If you try to compare wind with natural gas, but don’t publish your future price of natural gas, you don’t really have much of a comparison, do you? And how do you forecast the price of natural gas in 20 years anyways? Hamilton’s review of the Auditors work in this area is dead right.

This is a must read for anyone commenting on or developing policy in the electricity sector in Ontario.

PJM and GM run trial charging from renewable energy

Here's a cross-post from Glen Estill's blog.  It describes yet another way that Ontario could manage electrical demand during times when we have an abundance of renewal energy.

Glen Estill's wind-blog
January 29, 2012

PJM – the regional transmission operator for Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maryland has an interesting trial underway with charging of the Chevy Volt, the plug in hybrid from General Motors.

The system operator will monitor the output from the region’s renewable energy sources, and when surplus is available, will send a signal to General Motors. General Motors will then relay the signal on to the Chevy Volts connected to the system via their On Star system, and tell those vehicles to beginning charging their batteries. It shows forward thinking both by PJM and GM.

I like the fact that it is using existing technology – the On Star system, that is standard with the Volt. This makes such a system insanely cheap to implement.

Of course if the system operator can send signals for when renewable energy is available, they could act on almost any parameter, such as when power is in surplus from any source, or when power is cheapest. The renewable energy aspect of this is mainly for public relations – system operators need more tools to allow them to manage both times of surplus and shortage of power, and this is a powerful and very low cost tool.

PJM is showing great foresight in looking into this now. There are still some unknowns about electric cars. How many will there be? How much power can the average one take? How many cars are plugged in when the signal is sent? Gathering information now will help them greatly as the number of electric cars proliferates. They will also learn how to quickly implement systems, and standardize software interfaces to accommodate new electric car makes and models.

The Ontario IESO has talked about an emerging problem of surplus baseload generation (SBG). This is when generation in the province exceeds demand (including exports). As we bring on more inflexible refurbished nuclear plants, that can’t be shut down easily, the problem is likely to get worse. Of course, if you can shift demand to times of SBG, you could solve the problem. Using electric cars is just one solution, but one that will become more important as the electric car fleet increases in size.

The Chevy Volt stores 16 kWh fully charged. If an average Volt requires 10 kWh to be topped up at the end of the day, then 100,000 Volts would require 1 million kWh, or 1000 MW of generation for an hour. This is equal to 70% of Ontario’s wind fleet, or equal to the output of 2 of the Pickering units. This is not a trivial amount. And 100,000 Chevy Volts is only a little over 1% of the vehicle fleet in Ontario, and less than half the current fleet of hybrid vehicles. In addition to the Volt, there is the Nissan Leaf, which stores 24 kWh, and another 10 plug in electric vehicles coming to the market in the next year or two. 1% may be conservative.

The bottom line is electric cars offer interesting potential to buffer times of surplus power on a system. If this is added to using dams to store water when surplus generation exists, either in Ontario or neighbouring hydraulic based Quebec and Manitoba, or switching on hot water heaters, and other innovative load shifting techniques, the problem of SBG can be addressed. It would be good if the IESO would begin their own trials with GM.

Minnesota Wind To Be Stored By Manitoba Hydro

This is another terrific cross-post from Glen Estill

Wind-blog.com

January 31, 2012

Glen Estill

An interesting story crossed my screen this morning. Minnesota is going to buy electricity from Manitoba’s hydroelectric system. Part of the agreement allows them to send energy from Minnesota wind north to Manitoba, to allow Manitoba to store that energy behind their power dams.

Minnesota is one of the leading States in supplying their power from wind. Minnesota has over 2700 MW of wind capacity, much of it located on the Buffalo Ridge in the south west corner of the state. They have almost double the installed capacity of Ontario, and their total consumption is a little over 40% of Ontario’s. So they get a lot more of their power from wind than we do – more than 4 times as a percentage of supply. They have been doing it longer, so they have more experience integrating it with other power sources. And that is why this agreement is significant. They realize that one of the least cost ways of storing is to use existing hydro dams.

The agreement calls for the purchase of 250 MW of electricity from water power for 15 years, beginning in 2020. And it allows Minnesota to export power when they have surplus from their wind facilities.

Ontario also borders Manitoba. But Manitoba is a long way from Ontario’s big load centers. It is costly to use Manitoba to store our wind energy during times of surplus, at least if new transmission needs to be built. Ontario has only small connections to Manitoba today. Ontario can use its own hydro resources to store a lot of wind today, but in times of surplus, it would make the most sense for Ontario to use the existing storage available in Quebec. They have multi year storage capability. Even better, the Province of Quebec is a winter peaking jurisdiction, exactly when the wind is strongest. Quebec could use Ontario’s wind when their water flows are lowest, saving energy behind their dams, to sell back to us when Ontario’s summer peaks occur. This would use existing power dams, and existing transmission – we have over 2000 MW of connection to Quebec already. This is enough to transmit all of Ontario’s wind production, should it all be in surplus at any point.

It is time for the government or the IESO to begin the discussion.

CCO Calls for Moratorium on Car Sales

It doesn't get much better than this.

Car Concerns Ontario (CCO) today called for a moratorium on sale of new cars, citing their danger to the health of citizens.

According to CCO, cars result in the deaths of over 2000 Canadians per year in traffic fatalities, killing more Canadians than are killed by homicides. “The impact of the use of automobiles on the health of our population is simply unacceptable,” said William Bouche, spokesman for CCO. “In addition to deaths, there are thousands of injuries.”

The CCO web site lists other concerns. Collisions with birds are estimated at over 5 million per year in Ontario. The negative impact of automobile exhaust was cited as a major source of air pollution. The use of food growing land to build roads to is a major concern. The impact on insect populations, the base of the food chain birds and bats in particular was mentioned as an area that desperately needs more study. Vibrations caused by passing cars are suspected to harm earthworm populations.

A main objection to cars was the sound they make. “Cars driving by can wake people up,” said Bouche. “They make a sound that carries for miles, and they are louder than the refrigerator inside a home.” Sleep deprivation has been associated with poor health.

Car Vigilance Ontario (CVO), a splinter group, goes further. “We all know that a certain percentage of the population gets car sickness. This is because the human body was not made to travel faster than 25 miles per hour, the speed of a thoroughbred racehorse. The long term health impact of the travel in cars has not been studied adequately. The precautionary principal dictates that we ban cars until these impacts are known,” said Carmen Corbeau, spokesperson for CVO. “We need to think about the children.”

The Mayor of Sanguine Shores, Joe Bruce, agreed. “A substantial portion of municipal land is used for roads, yet cars pay no property tax at all. It is difficult to find funds to run a municipality when this subsidy for cars is funded entirely by towns and cities.”

Buzz Hargrove, former head of the Canadian Union of Auto Workers disagreed. “Cars have been in use on Ontario roads for over a century. And Ontario workers produce more cars than any other jurisdiction in North America. Someone has to speak for the workers, and the drivers. We can’t let government policy be beholden to the views of fringe groups.”

Tim Hudak, leader of the PC party blames cars on the government. “It is time to hold the McGuinty government accountable for cars, and the damage they cause. The subsidies have to stop. Ontarion’s can’t afford the cost to drive cars any more.”

Dalton McGuinty’s office issued this statement. “The car industry is the backbone of Ontario’s manufacturing sector, and creates thousands of jobs.”

Nobody addressed the issue of how people will get around without cars.

Design of Health Study for Wind Turbines

This is a cross-post from Glen Estill's Wind Blog

The opponents of wind energy claim that wind turbines make people sick. There are a few signs around that say “Health studies before wind turbines.” And of course this sounds very reasonable – it sounds “reasonableish”. This word is patterned on “truthiness”, which wikipedia defines as “a “truth” that a person claims to know intuitively “from the gut” or because it “feels right” without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts.”

But lets suppose we were to design a health study about wind turbines? What would it have to look like, in order to have meaningful results?

There would of course be a number of scientific standards that would need to be applied. Ideally you would use blind researchers, who ask questions and gather data without knowing what they are studying. This reduces bias in the answers. You of course need a control group. If 10% of the subjects in a test wind area have tinnitus (ringing in the ears), and this is the same as outside of the wind area, then it would seem unlikely that wind turbines are the cause. All of the medical conditions – tinnitus, insomnia, headaches, nosebleeds etc. – claimed by people living near wind turbines are conditions found elsewhere in the general population. It is only if the condition is significantly more prevalent near wind turbines that it would be significant. It is important that the study’s control group be similar to the study group in age, sex, rural location, ethnicity etc., to make the control group more comparable.

The symptoms of wind turbine syndrome claimed by the opponents of wind are all self reported. This poses a problem, since it means the attitude toward wind affects the person’s viewpoint, and the survey’s outcome. A self reported problem is something like insomnia, or a headache. A doctor can’t prove or disprove either of these – he has to rely on the the patient’s statements. It would be desirable to gather some objective health data, such as blood work, urine analysis, blood pressure etc. These are well known tools in diagnosing health issues.

The most important information that the study needs to gather is information on whether or not the subject’s family receives compensation from having wind turbines nearby. The anecdotal evidence from those in the industry, who have landowners who live among turbines, is that those who earn income from wind turbines don’t get sick. The antidote for wind turbine syndrome is money – which of course calls into question the medical validity of the syndrome. The anecdotal evidence is at least as strong as the anecdotal evidence presented by the opponents of wind. After all, there are hundreds of people who lease their land to wind projects in Ontario who don’t get sick, and hundreds of thousands around the world. A study that does not account for the money issue would lack credibility to the point of irrelevancy.

A study should of course refer to the health impact studies of other sources of generation. Many studies have demonstrated the negative health impact of burning coal, for example, and we still have uncertain consequences from fracking for natural gas, and 3 out of just over 100 nuclear plants operating in the world have had meltdowns. No source of power is without health issues. It is not wind or nothing. It is wind or something else.

Wind Concerns Ontario, the umbrella group for the anti winders, has asked their members not to participate in a health study. Yet they have asked for a health study to be done before any more wind is built. This of course reveals both their fears, and their true agenda. They fear the result of a health study, because they know that the health issue is tenuous at best, exaggerated in the extreme, if not made up altogether. And their true agenda is not to have a health study, but to stop wind turbines from being built at all.