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Those government numbers. The US midwest has more sunny days and more windy days then southern ontario where the majority of these things are. Just a FYI.

Let's think about that for a second. Do you really think the government is shelling out $6,716 every time someone buys $100 worth of solar panel from Walmart? And that there's a giant conspiracy to hide that fact from consumers? Does that seem like a sane explanation to you? Or maybe that website should not be trusted without double checking elsewhere on the web.

Not quite that much but according to Fit and Microfit prices here in Ontario, but it's pretty damn close, or roughly 2/3's the price. And people wonder why Ontario has gone from people loving "green energy" to "fuck this, we're grabbing pitch forks."

I'm not entirely sure what your angle is here (sarcasm and whatnot not translating well over the tubes), but there is a difference between facts and numbers. OP gave numbers -- which might be true, out-of-date, or flat-out wrong -- with little proof. As another poster pointed out, OP is off by a factor of ~4-5 from Tesla and GM prices for batteries.

Regarding cost for 660 kWh = $100-$200 claim, this appears (?) to be loosely based on the residential cost of electricity, not the wholesale cost, which is a factor of ~10 less. I'm not sure how buses in Ontario would work, so I can't say what the proper pricing would actually be...but using the wholesale prices from 2016, this works out to be ~$11 to fill up, using the off-peak residential rates it's ~$60, and the peak prices yield ~$120 (excluding inefficiencies).

If we want to get more into the weeds, then yes, I just gave some numbers with "proof" which may be flawed. You're welcome to disagree with my sources -- they could be wrong, and I'd appreciate any corrections to my numbers and/or reasoning.

So when I looked this up, I found the following breakdown: Nuclear 36%, Gas/Oil 28%, Hydro 23%, Wind 11%, Biofuel 1%, Solar 1%. That's 36% of total energy generation.

No, that is 36% of capacity (MW), not production (MWH), a common mistake here on /.. If you use traditional capacity factors, Nuclear (60%) is even larger part of the mix, Wind drops to about 6% and Solar doesn't even hit 0.25%

You want to know what the kicker is? In Ontario "green energy" accounts for under 1% of total generation and over 55% of the total price sold to consumers.

So when I looked this up, I found the following breakdown: Nuclear 36%, Gas/Oil 28%, Hydro 23%, Wind 11%, Biofuel 1%, Solar 1%. That's 36% of total energy generation.

People can't afford 0.18/kWH(which is the peak price in Ontario) already.

Looking this one up, I found that they only pay peak rate for 6 hours out of the day. Then they pay "mid-peak" at 13.2 cents for another 6 hours, then 8.7 cents for the rest. Which is Pretty Goddamned Low

the most conservative estimate is that it will raise the cost of goods across all sectors by 20%

Honest question, do you work for them? The Conservatives I mean.

See the real time data for how Ontario achieves this. In 2015, they produced 90% of their energy from non-fossil sources. (60% nuclear + 24% hydro)

"It is increasingly plausible to foresee a future in which cheap renewable electricity becomes the world's primary power source and fossil fuels are relegated to a minority status," reads the conclusion of the 32-page document, produced by Policy Horizons Canada.

This is total BS; even with immense investment the world over, wind and solar haven't even made a dent in fossil fuel consumption. If anything, they cement the position of fossil fuels required for backing up their intermittent and unreliable power. See a short video about the reality of Germany's wind and solar, or one of the many articles about Germany's return to coal for providing reliable power. Their attempt to phase out nuclear has been a very expensive failure, and only succeeded in ramping coal consumption, including construction of new plants.

"It's absolutely not pie in the sky," said Michal Moore from the University of Calgary's School of Public Policy. "These folks are being realistic -- they may not be popular, but they're being realistic."

Notice the need to reaffirm their nonsense not once, but three times. The data does not support their position, so they continue to repeat the lie. Sadly, this often works.

Here in Ontario, "windpower" accounts for under 1% of our daily generation. Nuclear accounts for ~70-75%, while hydroelectric makes up ~10% give or take a bit.

http://www.ieso.ca/Pages/Power...

Nuclear is baseload and quickly loses efficiency if you try to ramp it up and down and makes up most of Ontario's energy production. Wind's nameplate capacity in Ontario is under 2GW and they also have plenty of hydro & gas.

In 5 years of tracking the output from IESO I can't recall nuclear falling below 9.5GW.
Yes, the wind farms have "must-take" but if they are not producing, they don't get a penny.
Ontario has tried several times to price out building 2 new nuke plants and every time the bill gets much higher & the timeline longer.

When the nuke industry finds a way to build faster & cheaper without compromising reliability, they'll do very well.

The great blackout of 2003, which took out the north east united states and a good chunk of ontario, was caused by deregulation (removing the requirement to clear the branches around the power lines).
Quebec, which has state-owned power (Hydro-Quebec) was not hit hard by that blackout, because it keeps its grid out of phase with those dangerously unregulated parts around it.

Learn the lesson: You can't trust the greedy to run critical infrastructure.

"In February 2004, the U.S.-Canada Power System Outage Task Force released their final report, placing the main cause of the blackout on FirstEnergy Corporation's failure to trim trees in part of its Ohio service area. The report states that a generating plant in Eastlake, Ohio (a suburb of Cleveland) went offline amid high electrical demand, putting a strain on high-voltage power lines (located in a distant rural setting) which later went out of service when they came in contact with "overgrown trees". The cascading effect that resulted ultimately forced the shutdown of more than 100 power plants."

Deregulation did not cause the blackout.

Quebec, being Quebec, keeps everything it can out of phase with the rest of Canada.

I'm assuming you're from Canada, and most likely Ontario. You have little or no knowledge of the power system. Go to the operators website for the power grid in Ontario and educate yourself. www.ieso.ca

And here is some more information on the blackout

The great blackout of 2003, which took out the north east united states and a good chunk of ontario, was caused by deregulation (removing the requirement to clear the branches around the power lines).
Quebec, which has state-owned power (Hydro-Quebec) was not hit hard by that blackout, because it keeps its grid out of phase with those dangerously unregulated parts around it.

Learn the lesson: You can't trust the greedy to run critical infrastructure.

"In February 2004, the U.S.-Canada Power System Outage Task Force released their final report, placing the main cause of the blackout on FirstEnergy Corporation's failure to trim trees in part of its Ohio service area. The report states that a generating plant in Eastlake, Ohio (a suburb of Cleveland) went offline amid high electrical demand, putting a strain on high-voltage power lines (located in a distant rural setting) which later went out of service when they came in contact with "overgrown trees". The cascading effect that resulted ultimately forced the shutdown of more than 100 power plants."

Deregulation did not cause the blackout.

Quebec, being Quebec, keeps everything it can out of phase with the rest of Canada.

I'm assuming you're from Canada, and most likely Ontario. You have little or no knowledge of the power system. Go to the operators website for the power grid in Ontario and educate yourself. www.ieso.ca

And here is some more information on the blackout

i agree - while there is economic incentive for providing various types of operating reserve, these are meant to cover the failure of the single biggest unit and transmission line in the area and not growth in demand.

The markets are meant to provide economic incentive for private investors to build power stations, but that means higher prices which makes governments look bad, energy companies look like thieves, and consumers angry.

in ontario, when supply got tight the market operator would lower the reserve requirement to prevent the price from climbing to high. I can't find the citation for this right now, but it is http://www.ieso.ca/imoweb/marketSurveil/mspReports.asp somewhere in there.

Without energy prices high enough to justify the investment, there is no investment.

the money isn't on the table

Regular homeowners here have fixed electricity prices, or sometimes two prices for peak vs. off-peak usage hours. But, if you are a large enough user to participate directly in the wholesale electricity markets (which a multi-megawatt data center certainly is), not so. Wholesale electricity prices fluctuate on a 5-minute basis in many areas of the country, and there are enormous amounts of money to be saved (or squandered) by timing your consumption well. The big dogs can adjust their usage in response to the current 5-minute price, and they can also play the markets in various financial products designed to hedge against unpredictable electricity prices.

And, FWIW, the same is true in Canada. For instance, see the hourly wholesale electricity price at http://www.ieso.ca/ for Ontario.

In Ontario, we're having an electricity surplus. With a manufacturing "slow-down" and a cool summer, the grid is peaking about 7 gigawatts below typical load for this time of year.

Which means it's running almost entirely on nuclear and hydro, which are effectively "free" by comparison to coal, oil and gas.

So wholesale customers are getting rates below 1 cent per kWh. Large industrial customers may even be getting rebates to use power.

At least one ~700 MW reactor has been shut down to reduce base generating capacity.

What crisis is that again?

Thank you, captain obvious. Now consider you have a battery (fossil fuel) at point A powering a load (a house, for example) at point B. What happens when you add another battery in parallel (say a solar panel on the roof of said house) also at point B. What happens to the current between points A and B? Hint: it does not increase...

This is a common misconception about how the grid works. People think the generators are batteries waiting to be used, and all we have to do is turn a light on.

Wrong.

The grid is a complex machine that anticipates when you are going to turn the light on, and attempts to start a generator at the same time so that they can produce the electricity you need, when you need it. For example, here is Ontario's guess about how much power they will need today.

The problem is the generators can take a while to start. Take for example a steam powered turbine. The operator assumes (from past history) that by 3pm 10MW will be required by the grid and so in anticipation of that, he starts burning more fuel at 2:30 to heat more water.

However, at 3pm when he is burning enough fuel to produce 10MW, the wind in the area changes direction, and those wonderfully green wind generators now put out an extra 3MW. The total power being generated is 13MW, however, the demand is only for 10MW. For sake of the argument, it will take 1/2hr (in my example) for the turbine to slow down to 7MW (due to built up energy in the boiler - nuclear is even slower to react). There is an excess of 3MW on the grid that MUST be consumed or bad things will happen. By the way, this is why Manitoba Hydro can offer such great rates to the locals. They purchase cheep excess power from the states all night, then sell expensive power during the day. (Thank you, btw. As a result its cheaper for me to heat my house in -30C with electricity then natural gas.)

Here's where the thin wire problem starts to come into effect. Next door, they have hydro power, which can very quickly be dialed down and they would be glad to purchase the 3MW of excess power we have (since its excess, the market price will be low). The line connecting us can handle 5MW. However, there is currently (sorry) 4MW already flowing from us to them. Adding the 3MW puts us over the 5MW limit and again bad things happen.

The only option left is for the wind mills to feather their blades and reduce production. The steam turbine keeps burning the fossil fuels. All because we could not export our excess.

A wire has a given amount of current that can flow through it before it melts. Take a thin wire and connect it to the + and - terminals on your car battery (use thick leather gloves so you don't get burned) and see what happens when you stuff too much power down a wire.

Here is a link to the outfit that runs the grid in Ontario. When a generator wants to generate but can't due to the fact that there isn't enough transmission capacity to get the power out of their plant they get "constrained off", ie they don't generate. The link talks about how much they get paid for not generating.

Must be nice to get paid for doing nothing.

But anyway, wires do get congested but not the same way your nose does.

You can't run 1.2 MW on coaxial cable though can you? Really I don't know if coax that hefty exists. Even big microwave towers cell sites don't run 1.2 MW through their antennas.

To get 1.2 MW of Power flowing into your car you are going to either need a 1000A at 12kV or 100A at 120kV.

Either way you are going to have a pretty meaty conductor or one that is insulated to hell.

The slow night charge (when electricity is cheaper) will be a good option

http://www.ieso.ca/imoweb/marketdata/marketToday.a sp Seems to disagree with your assumption. Also remember all the hydro dams most contries have. Small Rant: At the moment most run at 100% to maximise investment, but I can imagine that during solar peak times you use solar plants and your reservoirs fill up. During solar downtime (e.g. night) then you use the existing hydro plants but in the meantime have fitted them with more generators so they can now provide all the country's power (even if it is only until they have drained their reservoir).