Fluorescent bulbs deliver mixed results

SaskPower Rate Hike 2022-2023 signals higher electricity rates in Saskatchewan as natural gas costs surge; the Rate Review Panel approved increases, affecting residential utility bills amid affordability concerns and government energy policy shifts.

Key Points

An 8% SaskPower electricity rate increase split 4% in Sept 2022 and 4% in Apr 2023, driven by natural gas costs.

✅ 4% increase Sept 1, 2022; +4% on Apr 1, 2023

✅ Panel-approved amid natural gas price surge and higher fuel costs

✅ Avg residential bill up about $5 per step; affordability concerns

The NDP Opposition is condemning the provincial government’s decision to approve the Saskatchewan Rate Review Panel’s recommendation to increase SaskPower’s rates for the first time since 2018, despite a recent 10% rebate pledge by the Sask. Party.

The Crown electrical utility’s rates will increase four per cent this fall, and another four per cent in 2023, a trajectory comparable to BC Hydro increases over two years. According to a government news release issued Thursday, the new rates will result in an average increase of approximately $5 on residential customers’ bills starting on Sept. 1, 2022, and an additional $5 on April 1, 2023.

“The decision to increase rates is not taken lightly and came after a thorough review by the independent Saskatchewan Rate Review Panel,” Minister Responsible for SaskPower Don Morgan said in a news release, amid Nova Scotia’s 14% hike this year. “World events have caused a significant rise in the price of natural gas, and with 42 per cent of Saskatchewan’s electricity coming from natural gas-fueled facilities, SaskPower requires additional revenue to maintain reliable operations.”

But NDP SaskPower critic Aleana Young says the rate hike is coming just as businesses and industries are struggling in an “affordability crisis,” even as Manitoba Hydro scales back a planned increase next year.

She called the announcement of an eight per cent increase in power bills on a summer day before the long weekend “a cowardly move” by the premier and his cabinet, amid comparable changes such as Manitoba’s 2.5% annual hikes now proposed.

“Not to mention the Sask. Party plans to hike natural gas rates by 17% just days from now,” said Young in a news release issued Friday, as Manitoba rate hearings get underway nearby. “If Scott Moe thinks his choices — to not provide Saskatchewan families any affordability relief, to hike taxes and fees, then compound those costs with utility rate hikes — are defensible, he should have the courage to get out of his closed-door meetings and explain himself to the people of this province.”

The province noted natural gas is the largest generation source in SaskPower’s fleet. As federal regulations require the elimination of conventional coal generation in Canada by 2030, SaskPower’s reliance on natural gas generation is expected to grow, with experts in Alberta warning of soaring gas and power prices in the region. Fuel and Purchased Power expense increases are largely driven by increased natural gas prices, and SaskPower’s fuel and purchased power expense is expected to increase from $715 million in 2020-21 to $1.069 billion in 2023-24. This represents a 50 per cent increase in fuel and purchased power expense over three years.

“In the four years since our last increase SaskPower has worked to find internal efficiencies, but at this time we require additional funding to continue to provide reliable and sustainable power,” SaskPower president & CEO Rupen Pandya said in the release “We will continue to be transparent about our rate strategy and the need for regular, moderate increases.”

Related News

• Electricity Forum News

• Energy Policy News

Labor National Electricity Market Reform aims to rebalance NEM rules, support a fair-dinkum clean energy target, enable renewable zones, bolster storage and grid reliability, empower households, and unlock CEFC investment via the Finkel review.

Key Points

Labor's plan to overhaul NEM rules for households, clean energy targets, renewable zones, storage, and CEFC investment.

✅ Revises NEM rules to curb big generators' market power

✅ Backs a clean energy target informed by the Finkel review

✅ Expands renewable zones, storage, and CEFC finance

Australia's Labor leader Bill Shorten has called for significant changes to the rules governing the national electricity market, saying they are biased in favour of big energy generators, leaving households worse off even with measures like a WA electricity bill credit in place.

He said the national electricity market (NEM) rules are designed to help the big companies recoup the money they spent on purchasing government assets, a dynamic echoed in debates like a Calgary market overhaul dispute unfolding in Canada, rather than encourage households to generate their own power, and they need to change faster to adapt to consumer needs.

His comments hint at a possible overhaul of the NEM’s governance structure under a future Labor government, because the current rule-making process is too cumbersome and slow, with suggested rules changes taking years to be introduced.

Daniel Andrews defends claims that civil liberties a 'luxury' in fight against terrorism

Labor had promoted a similar idea in the lead-up to the 2016 election, with its call for an electricity modernization review, but now the Finkel review has been released it would be used to guide such a review.

In a speech to the Australian Financial Review’s National Energy Summit in Sydney on Monday, Shorten recommitted Labor to negotiating a “fair-dinkum” clean energy target with the Turnbull government, amid modelling that a strong clean energy target can lower electricity prices, saying “it’s time to put away the weapons of the climate change wars” and work together to find a way forward.

He said the media and business can all share the blame for Australia’s lost decade of energy policy development, with examples abroad showing how leadership steers change, such as in Alberta where Kenney's influence on power policy has been pronounced, but “we need to stop spoiling for a fight and start seeking a solution”.

“The scare campaigns and hyper-partisanship that got Australia into this mess, will not get us out of it,” he will say.

“That’s why, a bit over four months ago, before the chief scientist released his report, I wrote to the prime minister offering an olive branch.

“I said Labor was prepared to move from our preferred position of an emissions intensity scheme and negotiate a fair-dinkum clean energy target.

“That offer was greeted with some cynicism in the media. But let me be crystal clear – I made that offer in good faith, and that offer still stands.”

Shorten said Australia needs to resolve the current “gas crisis” and do more to drive investment in renewable energy that delivers more reliable electricity, a priority underscored by the IEA's warning that falling global energy investment risks shortages, and if Labor wins the next election it will organise Australia into a series of renewable energy zones – as recommended by the chief scientist, Alan Finkel – that identify wind, solar, pumped hydro and geothermal resources, and connect them to the existing network.

“These zones would be based on both existing generation and storage in the area – and the potential for future development,” he said.

Australia's politics only barrier to clean energy system, report finds

“Identifying these zones – from eastern Queensland, north-east New South Wales, west Victoria, the Eyre Peninsula in South Australia and the entire state of Tasmania – will also plant a flag for investors – signalling future sites for job-creating projects.”

Shorten also said Labor will free up the Clean Energy Finance Corporation to invest in more generation and more storage.

“Under Labor, the return benchmark for the CEFC was set at the weighted average of the Australian government bond rate.

“Under this government, it was initially increased to the weighted average plus 4% to 5% and is now set at the average plus 3% to 4%.

“Setting the return benchmark too high defeats the driving purpose of the CEFC and it holds back the crucial investment Australia needs – right now – in new generation and storage.

“This is why a Labor government would restore the original benchmark return of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, to invest in more generation, more storage and more jobs.”

Related News

• Electricity Forum News

• Energy Policy News

Energy Vault Gravity Storage uses crane-stacked concrete blocks to deliver long-duration, grid-scale renewable energy; a SoftBank Vision Fund-backed, pumped-hydro analog enabling baseload power and a lithium-ion alternative with proprietary control algorithms.

Key Points

Gravity-based cranes stack blocks to store and dispatch power for hours, enabling grid-scale, low-cost storage.

✅ 4 MW/35 MWh modules; ~9-hour duration

✅ Estimated $200-$250/kWh; lower LCOE than lithium-ion

✅ Backed by SoftBank Vision Fund; Cemex and Tata support

Energy Vault, the Swiss-U.S. startup that says it can store and discharge electrical energy through a super-sized concrete-and-steel version of a child’s erector set, has landed a $110 million investment from Japan’s SoftBank Vision Fund to take its technology to commercial scale.

Energy Vault, a spinout of Pasadena-based incubator Idealab and co-founded by Idealab CEO and billionaire investor Bill Gross, unstealthed in November with its novel approach to using gravity to store energy.

Simply put, Energy Vault plans to build storage plants — dubbed “Evies” — consisting of a 35-story crane with six arms, surrounded by a tower consisting of thousands of concrete bricks, each weighing about 35 tons.

This plant will “store” energy by using electricity to run the cranes that lift bricks from the ground and stack them atop of the tower, and “discharge” energy by reversing that process. It’s a mechanical twist on the world’s most common energy storage technology, pumped hydro, which “stores” energy by pumping water uphill, and lets it fall to spin turbines when electricity is needed, even as California funds 100-hour long-duration storage pilots to expand flexibility worldwide.

But behind this simplicity lies some heavy-duty software to orchestrate the cranes and blocks, with a "unique stack of proprietary algorithms" to balance energy supply and demand, volatility, grid stability, weather elements and other variables.

CEO and co-founder Robert Piconi said in a November interview with GTM that the standard array would deliver 4 megawatts/35 megawatt-hours of storage, which translates to nearly 9 hours of duration — the equivalent of building the tower to its height, and then reducing it to ground level. It can be built on-site in partnership with crane manufacturers and recycled concrete material, and can run fully automated for decades with little deterioration, he said.

And the cost, which Piconi pegged in the $200 to $250 per kilowatt-hour range, with room to decline further, is roughly 50 percent below the upfront price of the conventional storage market today, and 80 percent below it on levelized cost, he said, a trend utilities see benefits in as they plan resources.

The result, according to Wednesday’s statement, is a technology that could allow “renewables to deliver baseload power for less than the cost of fossil fuels 24 hours a day,” in applications such as community microgrids serving low-income housing.

Wednesday’s announcement builds on a recent investment from Mexico's Cemex Ventures, the corporate venture capital unit of building materials giant Cemex, along with a promise of deployment support from Cemex's strategic network, and also follows project financing for a California green hydrogen microgrid led by the company. Piconi said in November that the company had sufficient investment from two funding rounds to carry it through initial customer deployments, though he declined to disclose figures.

This is the first energy storage investment for Vision Fund, the $100 billion venture fund set up by SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son. While large by startup standards, it’s in keeping with the capital costs that Energy Vault will face in scaling up its technology to meet its commitments, amid mounting demand in regions like Ontario energy storage that face supply crunches. Those include a 35 megawatt-hour order with Tata Power Company, the energy-producing arm of the Indian industrial conglomerate, first unveiled in November, as well as plans to demonstrate its first storage tower in northern Italy in 2019.

For Vision Fund, it’s also an unusual choice for a storage investment, given that the vast majority of venture capital in the industry today is being directed toward lithium-ion batteries, and even Mercedes-Benz energy storage ventures targeting the U.S. market. Lithium-ion batteries are limited in terms of how many hours they can provide cost-effectively, with about 4 hours being seen as the limit today.

The search for long-duration energy storage has driven investment into flow battery technologies such as grid-scale vanadium systems deployed on utility networks, compressed-air energy storage and variations on gravity-based storage, including a previous startup backed by Gross and Idealab, Energy Cache, whose idea of using a ski lift carrying buckets of gravel up a hill to store energy petered out with a 50-kilowatt pilot project.

Related News

• Electricity Forum News

• EV Infrastructure News

Ontario Clean Energy Expansion signals IESO-backed renewables, energy storage, and low-CO2 power to meet EV-driven demand, offset Pickering nuclear retirement, and balance interim gas-fired generation while advancing grid reliability, decarbonization, and net-zero targets.

Key Points

Ontario Clean Energy Expansion plans to grow renewables and storage, manage short-term gas, and meet rising demand.

✅ IESO long-term procurements for renewables and storage

✅ Interim reliance on gas to replace Pickering capacity

✅ Targets align with net-zero grid reliability goals

After cancelling hundreds of renewable power projects four years ago, the Doug Ford government appears set to expand clean energy to meet a looming electricity shortfall across the province.

Recent announcements from Ontario Energy Minister Todd Smith and the province’s electric grid management agency suggest the province plans to expand low-CO2 electricity with new wind and solar plans in the long-term, even as it ramps up gas-fired power over the next five years.

The moves are in response to an impending electricity shortfall as climate-conscious drivers switch to electric vehicles, farmers replace field crops with greenhouses and companies like ArcelorMittal Dofasco in Hamilton switch from CO2-heavy manufacturing to electricity-based production. Forecasters predict Canada will need to double its power supply by 2050.

While Ontario has a relatively low-CO2 power system, the province’s electricity supply will be reduced in 2025 when Ontario Power Generation closes the 50-year-old Pickering nuclear station, now near the end of its operating life. This will remove 3,100 megawatts of low-CO2 generation, about eight per cent of the province’s 40,000-megawatt total.

The impending closure has created a difficult situation for the Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO), the provincial agency managing Ontario’s grid. Last year, it forecasted it would need to sharply increase CO2-polluting natural gas-fired power to avoid widespread blackouts.

This would mean drivers switching to electric vehicles or companies like Dofasco cutting CO2 through electrification would end up causing higher power system emissions.

It would also fly in the face of the federal government’s ambition to create a net-zero national electricity system by 2035, a critical part of Canada’s pledge to reduce CO2 emissions to zero by 2050.

Yet the Ford government has appeared reluctant to expand clean energy. In the 2018 election, clean electricity was a key issue as it appealed to anti-turbine voters in rural Ontario and cancelled more than 700 renewable energy contracts shortly after taking office, taking 400 megawatts out of the system.

But there are signs the government is having a change of heart. IESO recently released a list of 55 companies approved to submit bids for 3,500 megawatts of long-term electricity contracts starting between 2025 and 2027, and the energy minister has outlined a plan to address growing energy needs as well.

The companies include a variety of potential producers, ranging from Canadian and global renewable companies to local utilities and small startups. Most are renewable power or energy storage companies specializing in low- or zero-emission power. IESO plans additional long-term bid offerings in the future.

This doesn’t mean gas generation will be turned off. IESO will contract yearly production from existing gas plants until 2028 (the annual contract in 2023 will be for about 2,000 megawatts). As well, IESO has issued contracts to four gas-fired producers, a small wind company and a storage company to begin production of about 700 megawatts to boost gas plant output starting between 2024 and 2026.

While this represents an expansion of existing gas-fired generation, Smith has asked IESO to report on a gas moratorium, saying he doesn’t believe new gas plants will be needed over the long term.

The NDP and Greens criticized the government for relying on gas in the near term. But clean energy advocates greeted the long-term plans positively.

The IESO process “will contribute to a clean, reliable and affordable grid,” said the Canadian Renewable Energy Association.

Rachel Doran, director of policy and strategy at Clean Energy Canada, said in an email the potential gas generation moratorium “is an encouraging step forward,” although she criticized the “unfortunate decision to replace near-term nuclear power capacity with climate-change-causing natural gas.”

There will have to be a massive clean energy expansion to green Ontario’s grid well beyond what has been announced in recent days for Ontario to meet its future energy needs (think a doubling of Ontario’s current 40,000-megawatt capacity by 2050).

But these first steps hold promise that Ontario is at least starting on the path to that goal, rather than scrambling to keep the lights on with CO2-polluting natural gas.

Related News

• Electricity Forum News

• Power Generation News

Lebanon Electricity Sector Reform aims to overhaul tariffs, modernize the grid, cut fuel oil subsidies, unlock donor loans, and deliver 24-hour power, restructuring EDL governance, boosting generation capacity, and reducing the budget deficit.

Key Points

A plan to restructure EDL, adjust tariffs, add capacity, and cut subsidies to deliver 24-hour power and reduce deficits.

✅ New tariffs and phased cost recovery

✅ Added generation capacity and grid modernization

✅ Governance reform of EDL and loss reduction

Lebanon’s Cabinet has approved a much-anticipated plan to restructure the country’s dysfunctional electricity sector, as Beirut power challenges continue to underscore chronic gaps, which hasn’t been developed since the time of the country’s civil war, decades ago.

The Lebanese depend on a network of private generator providers and decrepit power plants that rely on expensive fuel oil, while Israeli power supply competition seeks to lower consumer prices in a nearby market. Subsidies to the state electricity company cost nearly $2 billion a year.

For years, reform of the electricity sector, echoed by EU electricity market revamp, has been a major demand of Lebanon’s population of over 5 million. But frequent political stalemates, corruption and infighting among politicians, entrenched since the civil war that began in 1975, often derailed reforms.

International donors have called for reforms, including in the electricity sector, to unlock $11 billion in soft loans and grants pledged last year, as regional initiatives like the Jordan-Saudi electricity linkage move ahead to strengthen interconnections. Prime Minister Saad Hariri said Monday that the new plan will eventually provide 24-hour electricity.

Energy Minister Nada Boustani said that if there were no obstacles, residents could start feeling the difference next year, as an electricity market overhaul advances alongside the plan.

The plan, which is expected to get parliament approval, will reform the state electricity company, introduce new pricing policies, with international examples like France's electricity pricing scheme, and boost power production.

“This plan will also reduce the budget deficit,” Hariri told reporters. “This is positive and all international ratings companies will see … that Lebanon is taking real steps to reform in this sector.”

Lebanon’s soaring debt prompted rating agencies to downgrade the country’s credit ratings in January over concerns the government may not be able to pay its debts. Unemployment is believed to be at 36 per cent and more than 1 million Syrian refugees have overwhelmed the already aging infrastructure, while policy debates like Alberta electricity market changes illustrate different approaches to balancing cost and reliability.

Boustani told the Al-Manar TV that the electricity sector should be spared political bickering and populist approaches.

Related News

• Electricity Forum News

• Energy Policy News

Atlantic Clean Power Superhighway outlines a federally backed transmission grid upgrade for Atlantic Canada, adding 2,000 MW of renewable energy via interprovincial ties, improved hydro access from Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador, with utility-regulator funding.

Key Points

A federal-provincial plan upgrading Atlantic Canada's grid to deliver 2,000 MW of renewables via interprovincial links.

✅ $2M technical review to rank priority transmission projects

✅ Target: add 2,000 MW renewable power to Atlantic grid

✅ Cost-sharing by utilities, regulators, and federal-provincial funding

The federal government will spend $2 million on an engineering study to improve the Atlantic region's electricity grid.

The study was announced Friday at a news conference held by 10 federal and provincial politicians at a meeting of the Atlantic Growth Strategy in Halifax, which includes ongoing regulatory reform efforts for cleaner power in Atlantic Canada.

The technical review will identify the most important transmission projects including inter-provincial ties needed to move electricity across the region.

Nova Scotia Premier Stephen McNeil said the results are expected in July.

Provinces will apply to the federal government for federal funding to build the infrastructure. Utilities in each province will be expected to pay some portion of the cost by applying to respective regulators, but what share falls to ratepayers is not known.

​Federal Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc characterized the grid improvements as something that will cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

He said the study was the first step toward "a clean power superhighway across the region.

"We have a historic opportunity to quickly get to work on upgrading ultimately a whole series of transmission links of inter-provincial ties. That's something that the government of Canada would be anxious to work with in terms of collaborating with the provinces on getting that right."

Premier McNeil referred specifically to improving hydro access from Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador.

For context, a massive cross-border hydropower line to New York is planned, illustrating the scale of projects under consideration.

Goal of 2,000 megawatts

McNeil said the goal was to bring an additional 2,000 megawatts of renewable electricity into the region.

"I can't stress to you enough how critical this will be for the future economic success and stability of Atlantic Canada, especially as Atlantic grids face intensifying storms," he said.

Federal Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen also announced a pilot project to attract immigrant workers will be extended by two years to the end of 2021.

International graduate students will be given 24 months to apply under the program — a one-year increase.

Related News

• Electricity Forum News

• Grid Technologies News