Industrial Conservation Initiative program cost others $1.27 billion in past 12 months

Ontario’s Industrial Conservation Initiative program, which rewards large “Class A” consumers for lower consumption during periods of high demand from the system operator’s supplier, cost others $1.27 billion in past 12 months. I won’t review the history of the program today as I did 3 years ago in “Stakeholders” destroying the viability of Ontario’s electricity market, but I will note that since last March a Variance Account under the [un]Fair Hydro Plan – which shifts costs from ratepayers today to rubes sometime in the future – a debt of $1.2 billion accumulated with April’s total still to be posted.

Today the system operator (IESO) posted the top 5 peak hours for the adjustment period that ended April 30th, 2018 (it started May 1, 2017) – and Monday the IESO posted the final Global Adjustment figures for April. This post will contain:

1. a quick demonstration of cost shift calculations,
2. review of the ICI value proposition, and
3. another jab at the province’s time-of-use (TOU) billing experiment performed on residential consumers.

For the 12 months of the ICI adjustment period the cost shift can be calculated as the difference between what Class A (larger consumers and ICI participants) did pay and what they would have paid were there not a separate class:

 

• The total global adjustment charge for the period was $11.821 billion dollars, and total consumption (both classes) 138.194 terawatt-hours (million MWh), so the average global adjustment rate was $85.54/MWh.
• Class A consumers were allocated a $1.8529 billion of the global adjustment total on 36.503 TWh of consumption which works out to an average global adjustment rate of $50.76/MWh
• The $35.78/MWh difference in that rate, on 36.503 million MWh, means $1.27 billion was avoided

American electricity data – for a perspective on Ontario costs

Electricity prices, and costs are aspects of a project I’m trudging through working with electricity data from the United States. I’ve developed a Power BI report which probably deserves a lot slicker interface, but time is limited. This post offers directions on controlling the reporting, and adds some Ontario context to the graphics.

My primary intent was to create imagery of average monthly electricity cost, by state, for residential consumers. Rates get a lot of discussion, even more so in recent weeks, but I’m not convinced an isolated rate analysis is useful.

A recent Scientific American article featured a smart BI report by Abhilash Kantamneni ( @akantamn on Twitter ).

Due to an exchange on Twitter I’d had with Abhilash a couple of weeks ago, I wanted to build a view that showed both rates, and average monthly consumer costs – because it turns out these are much different things.