Tag: curtailment

Spilling on OPG’s wasted hydro

Cold Air6 Comments

Ontario continues to waste its water rights on the Niagara river.

I revisited some posts I’ve written on this topic today, and updated data to bring the graphics up to the end of 2015

niagara.png

A very quick refresher to explain this first graphic.

  1. The U.S. and Canada share water rights on the Niagara river. Ontario Power Generation (OPG) runs the Niagara river power plants in Ontario, and there are similar plants on the U.S side (R. Moses Niagara). When I first encountered the issue in 2011, the U.S. side had additional generation because OPG could not get enough water through its turbines to utilize the full allocation.
  2. In March 2013 OPG completed the Niagara tunnel, which was to get more water to it’s turbines. OPG claimed output would increase by 1.6 million megawatt-hours (MWh).
  3. I’ve collected Ontario generation data back to 2010, and compared monthly summaries to the U.S. Energy Information Administration data for the U.S. sites.

The opposite of what should have happened is what has happened, as the gap that had disappeared about the time the tunnel entered service re-emerged, and continues to grow.Read More »