Topic: Preview: Tesla Model 3

[bye]

the electric vehicles have benefits, but remember, you're simply passing the "dirt" from one area to another...while your vehicles aren't producing emissions out the tail pipe, there is still an impact from the generation of electricity to begin with

What you don't realize is that refining oil to gasoline requires large amounts of electricity.
This is a great video explaining this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQpX-9OyEr4

My Smart ED uses less power to go the same distance as the electricity required to refine oil to gas to power a gas power car the same distance.  Meaning, it is NOT possible to achieve lower pollution than driving my car on the Ontario grid.

we still make a lot of our power using nuclear reactors, and dealing with the waste always has been, and likely will be an issue

Agree completely.  Which is why I purchase "BullFrog" power, namely, I fund the generation of 100% renewable electricity which equals the usage in my home (and two EV's).  By funding this power production which is fed into the Ontario grid, I am offsetting our usage, as I personally am no fan of Nuclear power.

the price of electricity in Ontario has skyrocketed over the last few years, and will only continue to balloon as our government is committing us to massive expensive wind/solar projects and reactor refurbishments (the Darlington plan alone will likely cost $30 Billion)...money that could have been better spent buying hydro electric power from Quebec.

In 2015, solar and wind produced less than 10% of the total production in Ontario as per this chart from the IESO :


Meanwhile, prices have risen.  The price paid to producers has not risen as much as the price paid to secure production (which gets paid out as the "global adjustment").  A major culprit here is the build out of 7GW of gas fired power generation, and given that gas only produced 10% of the total power in Ontario in 2015, we are effectively paying these private for-profit companies to sit gas plants idle while Nuclear and Hydro generate the bulk of our power needs. 

Unfortunately for Ontario, the massive Nuclear facilities are reaching end of life, and will need $30Billion to refurbish them, and when they go offline, we'll need reliable power, in the form of gas plants to keep the lights on.  So, we are paying a massive price now to secure reliability, so that we can spend even more refurbishing Nuclear, and finally, when all is said and done, we'll be paying 40% more for the Nuclear power in the form of rising electricity rates.

money that could have been better spent buying hydro electric power from Quebec.

I would agree completely, however, the need to build 5GW of transmission capacity to bring the power from the border of QC to the primary usage in GTA (Toronto, Hamilton, etc) would be extremely expensive.   

The latest large scale auction for wind and solar has seen prices drop dramatically, here is a sample:
http://www.ieso.ca/Pages/Participate/Generation-Procurement/Large-Renewable-Procurement/default.aspx

5 wind contracts totalling 299.5 MW, with a weighted average price of $85.94/MWh and an approximate weighted price range of $64.50 to $105.50/MWh
7 solar contracts totalling 139.885 MW, with a weighted average price of $156.67/MWh and an approximate weighted price range of $141.50 to $178.50/MWh

Wind at 8.5c/kWh is cheaper than we will be paying for the new Nuclear (9c/kWh) power in 2020 and beyond, and that's TODAY, the Wind price will only get cheaper!   Frustrating!

Solar at 14c/kWh is amazing cheap, given that solar can be placed on top of buildings next to where the power is needed, so no transmission to maintain.   Think about this for a minute, we pay massive amounts of money to maintain the transmission from Darlington, Bruce and other major power plants.  Solar doesn't require that.

[bye]

This was a good back.forth so I decided to add it to my blog, thanks for the inspiration, I meant to write about this
http://mysmartelectricdrive.blogspot.ca/2016/04/ontario-grid-nuclear-refurbishment-and.html

[Neromanceres]

This was a good back.forth so I decided to add it to my blog, thanks for the inspiration, I meant to write about this
http://mysmartelectricdrive.blogspot.ca/2016/04/ontario-grid-nuclear-refurbishment-and.html

Great comments and well thought out response.  I couldn't say it better myself.

There is a lot of conservative miss information about the electrical grid and costs in Ontario.  People seem to want to blame green energy for the cost increases.  When in reality the bulk of the increased costs come from the botched privatization hydro and the lack of investment by the Harris government that we now have/had to deal with.

[dirtyjeffer]

There is a lot of conservative miss information about the electrical grid and costs in Ontario.  People seem to want to blame green energy for the cost increases.  When in reality the bulk of the increased costs come from the botched privatization hydro and the lack of investment by the Harris government that we now have/had to deal with.

wrong...the issue is the complete mismanagement of this portfolio by the government who has mismanaged numerous other portfolios in the past 13+ years...there are numerous other areas with similar systems like we have who do not have the boondoggles we experienced.

[Sir Osis of Liver]

There is a lot of conservative miss information about the electrical grid and costs in Ontario.  People seem to want to blame green energy for the cost increases.  When in reality the bulk of the increased costs come from the botched privatization hydro and the lack of investment by the Harris government that we now have/had to deal with.

wrong...the issue is the complete mismanagement of this portfolio by the government who has mismanaged numerous other portfolios in the past 13+ years...there are numerous other areas with similar systems like we have who do not have the boondoggles we experienced.

Actually he's right. The biggest issues stemmed from the privatization fiasco and prior to that taking dividends that cut into maintenance and construction budgets.
It's similar to the mess that happened in Alberta.

This type of privatization in the power sector fails far more often than not in delivering savings to the customers or increased efficiencies on the business side.

[Neromanceres]

There is a lot of conservative miss information about the electrical grid and costs in Ontario.  People seem to want to blame green energy for the cost increases.  When in reality the bulk of the increased costs come from the botched privatization hydro and the lack of investment by the Harris government that we now have/had to deal with.

wrong...the issue is the complete mismanagement of this portfolio by the government who has mismanaged numerous other portfolios in the past 13+ years...there are numerous other areas with similar systems like we have who do not have the boondoggles we experienced.

I'm not saying the current administration is without fault.  But the boondoggles you refer to only add up to a few billion dollars.  Which in the grand scheme of things is not much money.  Just as an example a single nuclear reactor can cost upwards of 5 billion dollars to refurbish (and we have 19 active reactors in Ontario).

[Ex-airbalancer]

There is a lot of conservative miss information about the electrical grid and costs in Ontario.  People seem to want to blame green energy for the cost increases.  When in reality the bulk of the increased costs come from the botched privatization hydro and the lack of investment by the Harris government that we now have/had to deal with.

wrong...the issue is the complete mismanagement of this portfolio by the government who has mismanaged numerous other portfolios in the past 13+ years...there are numerous other areas with similar systems like we have who do not have the boondoggles we experienced.

I'm not saying the current administration is without fault.  But the boondoggles you refer to only add up to a few billion dollars.  Which in the grand scheme of things is not much money.  Just as an example a single nuclear reactor can cost upwards of 5 billion dollars to refurbish (and we have 19 active reactors in Ontario).

$5,000,000,000.00 ,  liar  , only just over $3b each, OPG has never been off with its estimates 
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2016/01/11/opg-to-announce-128b-for-refurbishment-of-darlington-nuclear-reactors.html

[safristi]

they can use the "WASTE" as U call it to power subs and small local city energy...BUT heaven forfend anyone who has seen a BULLSHIP NEWKLEER disaster MOOFIE from the 80's
....hands UP Hashtag  SET.."Who cant understand basic grade 3 Physics" get lose and looser with EMOTIONS
 STOP Dive and ROLL under your stupid desks   and BE SAFE Spacers

[dirtyjeffer]

There is a lot of conservative miss information about the electrical grid and costs in Ontario.  People seem to want to blame green energy for the cost increases.  When in reality the bulk of the increased costs come from the botched privatization hydro and the lack of investment by the Harris government that we now have/had to deal with.

wrong...the issue is the complete mismanagement of this portfolio by the government who has mismanaged numerous other portfolios in the past 13+ years...there are numerous other areas with similar systems like we have who do not have the boondoggles we experienced.

I'm not saying the current administration is without fault.  But the boondoggles you refer to only add up to a few billion dollars.  Which in the grand scheme of things is not much money.  Just as an example a single nuclear reactor can cost upwards of 5 billion dollars to refurbish (and we have 19 active reactors in Ontario).

a few billion??...its tens of billions, or over a hundred billion if you are going to include refurbishment of the nuke plants.

[dirtyjeffer]

There is a lot of conservative miss information about the electrical grid and costs in Ontario.  People seem to want to blame green energy for the cost increases.  When in reality the bulk of the increased costs come from the botched privatization hydro and the lack of investment by the Harris government that we now have/had to deal with.

wrong...the issue is the complete mismanagement of this portfolio by the government who has mismanaged numerous other portfolios in the past 13+ years...there are numerous other areas with similar systems like we have who do not have the boondoggles we experienced.

Actually he's right.

no, he's not...as i've said, there are plenty of areas (including eastern Canada) where the electrical system was privatized that don't have these issues...the problem is that it was broken up, it's that it has been completely mismanaged from all sides, all of which lies squarely on the Ontario Liberals...from the $1.3 Billion gas plant boondoggle to the tens of billions of dollars of non-sense "Green Energy Act" wind and solar projects, to massively overpaying people at Hydro One (the sunshine list has exploded with their names, including the CEO who makes 8x what Quebec Hydro's CEO makes, despite being about half the size, to the Debt Retirement Charge, which was supposed to go towards the "stranded debt" but was simply dumped into "General Revenues" to fund the numerous other boondoggles they've done over the past 13+ years.

[Sir Osis of Liver]

There is a lot of conservative miss information about the electrical grid and costs in Ontario.  People seem to want to blame green energy for the cost increases.  When in reality the bulk of the increased costs come from the botched privatization hydro and the lack of investment by the Harris government that we now have/had to deal with.

wrong...the issue is the complete mismanagement of this portfolio by the government who has mismanaged numerous other portfolios in the past 13+ years...there are numerous other areas with similar systems like we have who do not have the boondoggles we experienced.

Actually he's right.

no, he's not...as i've said, there are plenty of areas (including eastern Canada) where the electrical system was privatized that don't have these issues...the problem is that it was broken up, it's that it has been completely mismanaged from all sides, all of which lies squarely on the Ontario Liberals...from the $1.3 Billion gas plant boondoggle to the tens of billions of dollars of non-sense "Green Energy Act" wind and solar projects, to massively overpaying people at Hydro One (the sunshine list has exploded with their names, including the CEO who makes 8x what Quebec Hydro's CEO makes, despite being about half the size, to the Debt Retirement Charge, which was supposed to go towards the "stranded debt" but was simply dumped into "General Revenues" to fund the numerous other boondoggles they've done over the past 13+ years.

List some privatization successes. It's a short list.

What the Liberals have done is add to already existing problems.

But Hydro was having problems long before they were in office. The Tories took far too much money out of them, which caused deferred maintenance, refurbishment and construction. The break up was a mess. Exec salaries have been on the rise for years, that's hardly news. Given the state of the utilities, I'd want a tonne of money to do that job too.