Ontario’s High-Cost Wind Millstone

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“Wind costs four-times higher than average electricity.”

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by Marc Brouillette June 2017

In “Ontario’s High-Cost Wind Millstone” author Marc Brouillette concludes there is already an excess of wind-powered electricity and that any plans for further expansion will exacerbate existing high costs and inefficiencies.

Wind’s intermittency is misaligned with customers’ needs and undermines the price of electricity exports. These factors lead to the cost of usable wind being over four times Ontario’s average. While Ontario’s 2013 Long Term Energy Plan suggested that Ontario’s wind could “dance” with Quebec’s massive hydroelectric reservoirs, the seasonal and daily patterns of electricity use in both provinces and the current surplus of wind generation in the Great Lakes region mean that Ontario wind and Quebec hydroelectric reservoirs are not good dance partners.

Marc Brouillette is the principal consultant at Strategic Policy Economics and has been advising provincial and federal government ministries, agencies, and crown corporations for over 20 years on issues in the aerospace, energy, and gaming sectors. He specializes in matters that involve technology based public-private initiatives in policy driven regulated environments.