Put Ontario Hydro together again

SaskPower 10% Electricity Rebate promises one-year bill relief for households, farms, businesses, hospitals, schools, and universities in Saskatchewan, boosting affordability amid COVID-19, offsetting rate hikes, and countering carbon tax impacts under Scott Moe's plan.

Key Points

One-year 10% SaskPower rebate lowering bills for residents, farms, and institutions, funded by general revenue.

✅ Applies automatically to all customers for 12 months from Dec 2020.

✅ Average savings: $215 residential; $845 farm; broad sector coverage.

✅ Cost $261.6M, paid from the general revenue fund; separate from carbon tax.

Saskatchewan Party leader Scott Moe says SaskPower customers can expect a one-year, 10 per cent rebate on electricity if they are elected government.

Moe said the pledge aims to make life more affordable for people, including through lower electricity rates initiatives seen in other provinces. The rate would apply to everyone, including residential customers, farmers, businesses, hospitals, schools and universities.

The plan, which would cost government $261.6 million, expects to save the average residential customer $215 over the course of the year and the average farm customer $845.  

“This is a very equitable way to ensure that we are not only providing that opportunity for those dollars to go back into our economy and foster the economic recovery that we are working towards here, in Saskatchewan, across Canada and around the globe, but it also speaks to the affordability for our Saskatchewan families, reducing the dollars a day off to pay for their for their power bill,” Moe said.

The rebate would be applied automatically to all SaskPower bills for 12 months, starting in December 2020. 

Moe said residential customers who are net metering and generating their own power, such as solar power, would receive a $215 rebate over the 12-month period, which is the equivalent of the average residential rebate.

The $261.6 million in costs would be covered by the government’s general revenue fund.   

The Saskatchewan NDP said the proposed reduction is "a big change in direction from the Sask. Party’s long history of making life more expensive for Saskatchewan families." and recently took aim at a SaskPower rate hike approval as part of that critique.

Trent Wotherspoon, NDP candidate for Regina Rosemont and former finance critic, called the pledge criticized the one year time frame and said Saskatchewan people need long term, reliable affordability, noting that the Ontario-Quebec hydro deal has not reduced hydro bills for consumers. Something, he said, is reflected in the NDP plan.

“We've already brought about announcements that bring about affordability, such as the break on SGI auto insurance that'll happen, year after year after year, affordable childcare which has been already announced and committed to things like a decent minimum wage instead of having the lowest minimum wage in Canada,” Wotherspoon said.

The NDP pointed out SaskPower bills have increased by 57 per cent since 2007 for families with an average household income of $75,000, while Nova Scotia's 14% rate hike was recently approved by its regulator.

It said the average bill for such household was $901 in 2007-08 and is now $1,418 in 2019-20, while in neighbouring provinces Manitoba rate increases of 2.5 per cent annually have also been proposed for three years.

"This is on top of the PST increases that the Sask. Party put on everyday families – costing them more than $700 a year," the NDP said.

Moe took aim at the federal Liberal government’s carbon tax, citing concerns that electricity prices could soar under national policies.

He said if the Saskatchewan government wins its court fight against Ottawa, all SaskPower customers can expect to save an additional $150 million per year, and he questioned the federal 2035 net-zero electricity grid target in that context.

“As it stands right now, the Trudeau government plans to raise the carbon tax from $30 to $40 a tonne on Jan. 1,” Moe said. “Trudeau plans to raise taxes and your SaskPower bill, in the middle of a pandemic.  The Saskatchewan Party will give you a break by cutting your power bill.”

Related News

• Electricity Forum News

• Energy Policy News

Ukraine Electricity Exports resume to the European grid, starting with Moldova and expanding to Poland, Slovakia, and Romania, signaling energy security, grid resilience, added megawatts, and recovery after Russian strikes with support and renewables.

Key Points

Ukraine Electricity Exports are resumed sales of surplus power to EU neighbors, reflecting grid recovery and resilience.

✅ Initial deliveries to Moldova; Poland, Slovakia, Romania to follow.

✅ Extra capacity from repairs, warmer demand, and renewables.

✅ Exports may vary amid ongoing Russian strikes risk.

Ukraine began resuming electricity exports to European countries on Tuesday, its energy minister said, a dramatic turnaround from six months ago when fierce Russian bombardment of power stations plunged much of the country into darkness in a bid to demoralize the population.

The announcement by Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko that Ukraine was not only meeting domestic consumption demands but also ready to restart exports to its neighbors was a clear message that Moscow’s attempt to weaken Ukraine by targeting its infrastructure did not work.

Ukraine’s domestic energy demand is “100%” supplied, he told The Associated Press in an interview, and it has reserves to export due to the “titanic work” of its engineers and international partners.

Russia ramped up infrastructure attacks in September, when waves of missiles and exploding drones destroyed about half of Ukraine’s energy system. Power cuts were common across the country as temperatures dropped below freezing and tens of millions struggled to keep warm.

Moscow said the strikes were aimed at weakening Ukraine’s ability to defend itself, and has also moved to reactivate the Zaporizhzhia plant through new power lines, while Western officials said the blackouts that caused civilians to suffer amounted to war crimes. Ukrainians said the timing was designed to destroy their morale as the war marked its first anniversary.

Ukraine had to stop exporting electricity in October to meet domestic needs.

Engineers worked around the clock, often risking their lives to come into work at power plants and keep the electricity flowing. Kyiv’s allies also provided help. In December, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced $53 million in bilateral aid to help the country acquire electricity grid equipment, and USAID mobile gas turbine plant support, on top of $55 million for energy sector support.

Much more work remains to be done, Halushchenko said. Ukraine needs funding to repair damaged generation and transmission lines, and revenue from electricity exports would be one way to do that.

The first country to receive Ukraine’s energy exports will be Moldova, he said.

Besides the heroic work by engineers and Western aid, warmer temperatures are enabling the resumption of exports by making domestic demand lower, even as Germany’s coal generation shapes regional power flows.

Renewables like solar and wind power also come into play as temperatures rise, taking some pressure off nuclear and coal-fired power plants.

But it’s unclear if Ukraine can keep up exports amid the constant threat of Russian bombardment, with any potential agreement on power plant attacks still uncertain.

“Unfortunately now a lot of things depend on the war,” Halushchenko said. “I would say we feel quite confident now until the next winter.”

Exports to Poland, Slovakia and Romania are also on schedule to resume, he said.

“Today we are starting with Moldova, and we are talking about Poland, we are talking about Slovakia and Romania,” Halushchenko added, noting that how much will depend on their needs.

“For Poland, we have only one line that allows us to export 200 megawatts, but I think this month we will finish another line which will increase this to an additional 400 MW, so these figures could change,” he said.

Export revenue will depend on fluctuating electricity prices in Europe, where stunted hydro and nuclear output may affect recovery. In 2022, while Ukraine was still able to export energy, Ukrainian companies averaged 40 million to 70 million euros a month depending on prices, Halushchenko said.
 

Related News

• Electricity Forum News

• Power Generation News

New York Climate Transition Costs highlight rising utility bills for ratepayers as the state pursues renewable energy, electrification, and a zero-emissions grid, with Inflation Reduction Act funding to offset consumer burdens while delivering health benefits.

Key Points

Ratepayer-funded costs to meet New York's renewable targets and zero-emissions grid, offset by federal incentives.

✅ $48B in projects funded by consumers over two decades

✅ Up to 10% of utility bills already paid by some upstate users

✅ Targets: 70% renewables by 2030; zero-emissions grid by 2040

A generational push to tackle climate change in New York that includes its Green New Deal is quickly becoming a pocketbook issue headed into 2024.

Some upstate New York electric customers are already paying 10 percent of their electricity bills to support the state’s effort to move off fossil fuels and into renewable energy. In the coming years, people across the state can expect to give up even bigger chunks of their income to the programs — $48 billion in projects is set to be funded by consumers over the next two decades.

The scenario is creating a headache for New York Democrats grappling with the practical and political risk of the transition.

It’s an early sign of the dangers Democrats across the country will face as they press forward with similar policies at the state and federal level. New Jersey, Maryland and California are also wrestling with the issue and, in some cases, are reconsidering their ambitious plans, including a 100% carbon-free mandate in California.

“This is bad politics. This is politics that are going to hurt all New Yorkers,” said state Sen. Mario Mattera, a Long Island Republican who has repeatedly questioned the costs of the state’s climate law and who will pay for it.

Democrats, Mattera said, have been unable to explain effectively the costs for the state’s goals. “We need to transition into renewable energy at a certain rate, a certain pace,” he said.

Proponents say the switch will ultimately lower energy bills by harnessing the sun and wind, result in significant health benefits and — critically — help stave off the most devastating climate change scenarios. And they hope new money to go green from the Inflation Reduction Act, celebrating its one-year anniversary, can limit costs to consumers.

New York has statutory mandates calling for 70 percent renewable electricity by 2030 and a fully “zero emissions” grid by 2040, among the most aggressive targets in the country, aligning with a broader path to net-zero electricity by mid-century. The grid needs to be greened, while demand for electricity is expected to more than double by 2050 — the same year when state law requires emissions to be cut by 85 percent from 1990 levels.

But some lawmakers in New York, particularly upstate Democrats, and similar moderates across the nation are worried about moving too quickly and sparking a backlash against higher costs, as debates over Minnesota's 2050 carbon-free plan illustrate. The issue is another threat to Democrats heading into the critical 2024 battleground House races in New York, which will be instrumental in determining control of Congress.

Even Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat who is fond of saying that “we’re the last generation to be able to do anything” about climate change, last spring balked at the potential price tag of a policy to achieve New York’s climate targets, a concern echoed in debates over a fully renewable grid by 2030 elsewhere. And she’s not the only top member of her party to say so.

“If it’s all just going to be passed along to the ratepayers — at some point, there’s a breaking point, and we don’t want to lose public support for this agenda,” state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, a Democrat, warned in an interview.

Related News

• Electricity Forum News

• Energy Policy News

ISEM Price Volatility reflects Ireland-Northern Ireland grid balancing pressures, driven by dispatchable power shortages, day-ahead market dynamics, renewable shortfalls, and interconnector constraints, affecting intraday trading, operational reserves, and cross-border electricity flows.

Key Points

ISEM price volatility is Irish power price swings from grid balancing stress and limited dispatchable capacity.

✅ One-off spike linked to plant outage and low renewables

✅ Day-ahead market settling; intraday trading integration pending

✅ Interconnectors and reserves vital to manage adequacy

Irish grid-balancing prices soared to €3,774 ($4,284) per megawatt-hour last month amid growing concerns over dispatchable power capacity across Europe.

The price spike, triggered by an alert regarding generation losses, came only four months after Ireland and Northern Ireland launched an Integrated Single Electricity Market (ISEM) designed to make trading more competitive and improve power distribution across the island.

Evie Doherty, senior consultant for Ireland at Cornwall Insight, a U.K.-based energy consultancy, said significant price volatility was to be expected while ISEM is still settling down, aligning with broader 2019 grid edge trends seen across markets.

When the U.K. introduced a single market for Great Britain, called British Electricity Trading and Transmission Arrangements, in 2005, it took at least six months for volatility to subside, Doherty said.

In the case of ISEM, “it will take more time to ascertain the exact drivers behind the high prices,” she said. “We are being told that the day-ahead market is functioning as expected, but it will take time to really be able to draw conclusions on efficiency.”

Ireland and Northern Ireland have been operating with a single market “very successfully” since 2007, said Doherty. Although each jurisdiction has its own regulatory authority, they make joint decisions regarding the single market.

ISEM, launched in October 2018, was designed to help include Ireland and Northern Ireland day-ahead electricity prices in a market pricing system called the European Union Pan-European Hybrid Electricity Market Integration Algorithm.

In time, ISEM should also allow the Irish grids to participate in European intraday markets, and recent examples like Ukraine's grid connection underline the pace of integration efforts across Europe. At present, they are only able to do so with Great Britain. “The idea was to...integrate energy use and create more efficient flows between jurisdictions,” Doherty said.

EirGrid, the Irish transmission system operator, has reported that flows on its interconnector with Northern Ireland are more efficient than before, she said.

The price spike happened when the System Operator for Northern Ireland issued an alert for an unplanned plant outage at a time of low renewable output and constraints on the north-south tie-line with Ireland, according to a Cornwall Insight analysis.

Not an isolated event

Although it appears to have been a one-off event, there are increasing worries that a shortage of dispatchable power could lead to similar situations elsewhere across Europe, as seen in Nordic grid constraints recently.

Last month, newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) reported that German industrial concerns had been forced to curtail more than a gigawatt of power consumption to maintain operational reserves on the grid in December, after renewable production fell short of expectations and harsh weather impacts strained systems elsewhere.

Paul-Frederik Bach, a Danish energy consultant, has collected data showing that this was not an isolated incident. The FAZ report said German aluminum smelters had been forced to cut back on energy use 78 times in 2018, he noted.

Energy availability was also a concern last year in Belgium, where six out of seven nuclear reactors had been closed for maintenance. The closures forced Belgium to import 23 percent of its electricity from neighboring countries, Bach reported.

In a separate note, Bach revealed that 11 European countries that were net importers of energy had boosted their imports by 26 percent between 2017 and 2018. It is important to note that electricity imports do not necessarily imply a shortage of power, he stated.

However, it is also true that many European grid operators are girding themselves for a future in which dispatchable power is scarcer than today.

EirGrid, for example, expects dispatchable generation and interconnection capacity to drop from 10.6 gigawatts in 2018 to 9 gigawatts in 2027.

The Swedish transmission system operator Svenska Kraftnät, meanwhile, is forecasting winter peak power deficits could rise from 400 megawatts currently to 2.5 gigawatts in 2020-21.

Research conducted by the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity, suggests power adequacy will fall across most of Europe up to 2025, although perhaps not to a critical degree.

The continent’s ability to deal with the problem will be helped by having more efficient trading systems, Bach told GTM. That means developments such as ISEM could be a step in the right direction, despite initial price volatility.

In the long run, however, Europe will need to make sure market improvements are accompanied by investments in HVDC technology and interconnectors and reserve capacity. “Somewhere there must be a production of electricity, even when there is no wind,” said Bach. 

Related News

• Electricity Forum News

• Power Generation News

California Community Choice Aggregators are reshaping electricity markets with renewable energy, solar and wind sourcing, competitive rates, and customer choice, challenging PG&E, SDG&E, and Southern California Edison while advancing California's clean power goals.

Key Points

Local governments that buy power, often cleaner and cheaper, while utilities handle delivery and billing.

✅ Offer higher renewable mix than utilities at competitive rates

✅ Utilities retain transmission and billing responsibilities

✅ Rapid expansion threatens IOU market share across California

Nearly 2 million electricity customers in California may not know it, but they’re part of a revolution. That many residents and businesses are getting their power not from traditional utilities, but via new government-affiliated entities known as community choice aggregators. The CCAs promise to deliver electricity more from renewable sources, such as solar and wind, even as California exports its energy policies across Western states, and for a lower price than the big utilities charge.

The customers may not be fully aware they’re served by a CCA because they’re still billed by their local utility. But with more than 1.8 million accounts now served by the new system and more being added every month, the changes in the state’s energy system already are massive.

Faced for the first time with real competition, the state’s big three utilities have suddenly become havens of innovation. They’re offering customers flexible options on the portion of their power coming from renewable energy, amid a broader review to revamp electricity rates aimed at cleaning the grid, and they’re on pace to increase the share of power they get from solar and wind power to the point where they are 10 years ahead of their deadline in meeting a state mandate.

#google#

But that may not stem the flight of customers. Some estimates project that by late this year, more than 3 million customers will be served by 20 CCAs, and that over a longer period, Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison, and San Diego Gas & Electric could lose 80% of their customers to the new providers.

Two big customer bases are currently in play: In Los Angeles and Ventura counties, a recently launched CCA called the Clean Power Alliance is hoping by the end of 2019 to serve nearly 1 million customers. Unincorporated portions of both counties and 29 municipalities have agreed in principle to join up.

Meanwhile, the city of San Diego is weighing two options to meet its goal of 100% clean power by 2035, as exit fees are being revised by the utilities commission: a plan to be submitted by SDG&E, or the creation of a CCA. A vote by the City Council is expected by the end of this year. A city CCA would cover 1.4 million San Diegans, accounting for half SDG&E’s customer demand, according to Cody Hooven, the city’s chief sustainability officer.

Don’t expect the big companies to give up their customers without a fight. Indeed, battle lines already are being drawn at the state Public Utilities Commission, where a recent CPUC ruling sided with a community energy program over SDG&E, and local communities.

“SDG&E is in an all-out campaign to prevent choice from happening, so that they maintain their monopoly,” says Nicole Capretz, who wrote San Diego’s climate action plan as a city employee and now serves as executive director of the Climate Action Campaign, which supports creation of the CCA.

California is one of seven states that have legalized the CCA concept, even as regulators weigh whether the state needs more power plants to ensure reliability. (The others are New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Ohio, Illinois and Rhode Island.) But the scale of its experiment is likely to be the largest in the country, because of the state’s size and the ambition of its clean-power goal, which is for 50% of its electricity to be generated from renewable sources by 2030.

California created its system via legislative action in 2002. Assembly Bill 117 enabled municipalities and regional governments to establish CCAs anywhere that municipal power agencies weren’t already operating. Electric customers in the CCA zones were automatically signed up, though they could opt out and stay with their existing power provider. The big utilities would retain responsibility for transmission and distribution lines.

The first CCA, Marin Clean Energy, began operating in 2010 and now serves 470,000 customers in Marin and three nearby counties.

The new entities were destined to come into conflict with the state’s three big investor-owned utilities. Their market share already has fallen to about 70%, from 78% as recently as 2010, and it seems destined to keep falling. In part that’s because the CCAs have so far held their promise: They’ve been delivering relatively clean power and charging less.

The high point of the utilities’ hostility to CCAs was the Proposition 16 campaign in 2009. The ballot measure was dubbed the “Taxpayers Right to Vote Act,” but was transparently an effort to smother CCAs in the cradle. PG&E drafted the measure, got it on the ballot, and contributed all of the $46.5 million spent in the unsuccessful campaign to pass it.

As recently as last year, PG&E and SDG&E were lobbying in the legislature for a bill that would place a moratorium on CCAs. The effort failed, and hasn’t been revived this year.

Rhetoric similar to that used by PG&E against Marin’s venture has surfaced in San Diego, where a local group dubbed “Clear the Air” is fighting the CCA concept by suggesting that it could be financially risky for local taxpayers and questioning whether it will be successful in providing cleaner electricity. Whether Clear the Air is truly independent of SDG&E’s parent, Sempra Energy, is questionable, as at least two of its co-chairs are veteran lobbyists for the company.

SDG&E spokeswoman Helen Gao says the utility supports “customers’ right to choose an energy provider that best meets their needs” and expects to maintain a “cooperative relationship” with any provider chosen by the city.

Related News

• Electricity Forum News

• Energy Policy News

US Power Grid Blackouts highlight aging infrastructure, rising outages, and declining reliability per DOE and NERC data, with weather-driven failures, cyberattack risk, and underinvestment stressing utilities, transmission lines, and modernization efforts.

Key Points

US power grid blackouts are outages caused by aging grid assets, severe weather, and cyber threats reducing reliability.

✅ DOE and NERC data show rising outage frequency and duration.

✅ Weather now drives 68-73% of major failures since 2008.

✅ Modernization, hardening, and cybersecurity investments are critical.

The United States power grid has more blackouts than any other country in the developed world, according to new data and U.S. blackout warnings that spotlight the country’s aging and unreliable electric system.

The data by the Department of Energy (DOE) and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) shows that Americans face more power grid failures lasting at least an hour than residents of other developed nations.

And it’s getting worse.

Going back three decades, the US grid loses power 285 percent more often than it did in 1984, when record keeping began, International Business Times reported. The power outages cost businesses in the United States as much as $150 billion per year, according to the Department of Energy.

Customers in Japan lose power for an average of 4 minutes per year, as compared to customers in the US upper Midwest (92 minutes) and upper Northwest (214), University of Minnesota Professor Massoud Amin told the Times. Amin is director of the Technological Leadership Institute at the school.

#google#

The grid is becoming less dependable each year, he said.

“Each one of these blackouts costs tens of hundreds of millions, up to billions, of dollars in economic losses per event,” Amin said. “… We used to have two to five major weather events per year [that knocked out power], from the ‘50s to the ‘80s. Between 2008 and 2012, major outages caused by weather, reflecting extreme weather trends, increased to 70 to 130 outages per year. Weather used to account for about 17 to 21 percent of all root causes. Now, in the last five years, it’s accounting for 68 to 73 percent of all major outages.”

As previously reported by Off The Grid News, the power grid received a “D+” grade on its power grid report card from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) in 2013. The power grid grade card rating means the energy infrastructure is in “poor to fair condition and mostly below standard, with many elements approaching the end of their service life.” It further means a “large portion of the system exhibits significant deterioration” with a “strong risk of failure.”

“America relies on an aging electrical grid and pipeline distribution systems, some of which originated in the 1880s,” the 2013 ASCE report read. “Investment in power transmission has increased since 2005, but ongoing permitting issues, weather events, and limited maintenance have contributed to an increasing number of failures and power interruptions.”

As The Times noted, the US power grid as it exists today was built shortly after World War II, with the design dating back to Thomas Edison. While Edison was a genius, he and his contemporaries could not have envisioned all the strains the modern world would place upon the grid and the multitude of tech gadgets many Americans treat as an extension of their body. While the drain on the grid has advanced substantially, the infrastructure itself has not.

There are approximately 5 million miles of electrical transmission lines throughout the United States, and thousands of power generating plants dot the landscape. The electrical grid is managed by a group of 3,300 different utilities and serve about 150 million customers, The Times said. The entire power grid system is currently valued at $876 billion.

Many believe the grid is vulnerable to an attack on substations and other threats.

Former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano once said that a power grid cyber attack is a matter of “when” not “if,” as Russians hacked utilities incidents have shown.

Related News

• Electricity Forum News

• Grid Technologies News