Scathing: Ottawa-based economist Robert Lyman, who specializes in energy issues, has provided us with a summary of the highlights of the recently released Auditor General report…
Scathing: Ottawa-based economist Robert Lyman, who specializes in energy issues, has provided us with a summary of the highlights of the recently released Auditor General report…
Ontario: old Oneida word meaning “place where chiefs piss on people who like it.”
Surely by now, the bright lights in Toronto must know this thing cannot work. I know Liberals can’t do math…so they’re ‘full steam ahead’ approach of imposing this Greenapolusa must be mental illness.
Taxpayers need some type of balanced budget legislation to prevent this kind of destruction to a provincial economy.
Voters of Ontario loved being pissed on, they reward it with Majority governments.
the net benefit will be realized when the government reduces the amount if hydro we can use and increases the cost of it, by the second if they wish. that was and is the intent of the smart meters. smart for the government and real stupid for the people. how many ways can you say screw the taxpayer?
Yes, sad isn’t it. Criminals in power in the government and in the educational department. The price of being LIVs.
Even sadder is the fact that MSM is complicit in these crimes.
There’s nothing new about demand metering. They’ve never been cost effective for residential applications. Only large electrical customers use enough electricity to justify demand metering, and they’ve been on demand metering for at least 50 years. The cost of the meter, and most specifically the data-reading, is never justified by the value of the electricity saved. Unless that is that electricity rates are so ruinously high that no one can afford it anyway.
It was a marketing scheme. They changed the name from demand meters to smart meters to play on public sympathy with smart grids (even though no one in the public really knows what a smart grid is).
I’m not convinced these smart meters are a bad idea, assuming they can get the technology side of it right and assuming they would not be mandatory. The electrical system, much like a transit system or road system has to be designed around peak load for a few hours a day. The idea a selling power at a reduced rate in off peak periods has some merit. Do we really need to dry clothes and run the dishwasher at the supper hour. Reducing the overall peak load has huge potential savings in infrastructure costs. What am I am not understanding about these things?
Ken, like most of these schemes, the MSM was not really complicit so much as blindingly stupid, particularly where technology and infrastructure is concerned. This is a different generation of MSM. In the ’80s, you could make a technical argument to a reporter and they would get it after it had been explained clearly. But scientific and technical illiteracy is so rampant now that they don’t get it. By and large, you can blame it on the low quality of basic science education now.
Steve, they’ve always been a good idea that could never work. The meters are too expensive, the data collection is too expensive, to ever justify the cost of the capital to buy all the equipment. Utilities have been doing peak shaving for at least three decades by various programs, and by and large they’ve worked.
However, peak reduction is based on the principle that you reduce the use of the most expensive method of electricity generation. That doesn’t work any more, because the most expensive generation is the wind and solar. And the law requires that wind and solar be loaded first onto the grid and removed last. Because of this requirement, Ontario is forced at times of low power demand to reduce cheap hydro and nuclear. So there’s little actual economic savings from peak reduction, either to the system costs or to the individual customer, residential or industrial.
If they worked initially as specified (which they did not with 15% still not working), if they had been installed under a fixed contract rate (no variance between vendors instead of $81 at the low end to $544 at the high end), if a cost benefit analysis had demonstrated a clear benefit to the end user (which was never done), and if the Liberals had bothered to consult other jurisdictions to discover problems (of which there were a lot in California, for example) with implementation, they might be a good idea (because they never would have been installed in the first place). And yes, I am an electrical engineer, a programmer, no Luddite, and a small business owner over the last 25 years.
In short, they did not do due diligence but went with their collective guts, and their misplaced and misanthropic emotional philosophies, and the net gain is a loss and will continue to be a loss for the consumer. Stupid, just incredibly stupid.
“What am I am not understanding about these things? ”
For starters, the factors that make any of this nonsense necessary, e.g., a bloated, corrupt corporation called Ontario Hydro with a monopoly on electricity delivery that is overstaffed with overpaid employees at all levels; a disastrous green energy program that rewards parasites, gouges consumers, and destroys true “green space”; and last but certainly not least, a dull, stupid population that has lost any ability to smell bullshit.
The notion that if everyone practices “smart use” of electricity disintegrates if you apply one second of analytical thought. The huge, bloated corporation called Ontario Hydro (or whatever its constituent parts are known as today) has a yearly budget that requires X dollars. Ont. Hydro gets that revenue from one source: consumers. If I reduce my energy consumption by 10 percent, and my neighbour reduces hers by 10 percent, etc., that means the corporation’s income drops. But, it doesn’t change the fact that Ont. Hydro still needs X dollars from its only revenue source. The shortfall can only be made up in one way…raising the rates.
The eco-nazis want to dictate when you can use electricity they want to dictate when you can drive or leave home they want to dictate your food and drink and they even want to dictate how many kids you can have(Just like the Chi-Coms)and they want to decree the human population becuase they beleive this Population Bomb nonsense from paul Ehrlich
“…(even though no one in the public really knows what a smart grid is).”
But everyone knows that smart is good, so you sell the public on anything with the label “smart”. They all want to appear to be smart.
“…Do we really need to dry clothes and run the dishwasher at the supper hour? …”
Yes. That’s when most people have time to operate their machines that do their housework. They are at work during the day to pay for the economy and they come home and have supper and watch TV for a couple of hours while their machines are on and then go to sleep and wake up the next day to do it over again.
“The Ministry did not complete any cost-benefit analysis or business case (two important requirements before any major public investment is made) prior to making the decision to mandate the installation of smart meters.”
Sums up every government’s approach everywhere to every environmental initiative any of them have implemented in the last 35 years.
@ Steve; You’ve bought the eco-nazi argument hook-line-and-sinker. It is my business when I wish to dry my clothing and use my dishwasher. I shouldn’t be penalized for it.
I should not have to stay up to 1 a.m. to start the dryer because idiotic liberal/socialist governments listening to mentally deranged eco-nazi’s think that charging more for electricity during the day is a good idea. My taxes and bills help build the electrical infrastructure in Ontario. I shouldn’t be penalized because of idiot politicians ideology that is based on a fraud.
As TheTooner noted people drying clothes and using the dishwasher occurred for decades at the supper hour without any issue…..not one major problem….ever. Yet thanks to the global warming fraudsters we’ve got useless solar ‘farms’ (built on actual farm land by the way) and wind ‘farms’ forced on us with friends of the Lliberals earning millions of dollars in unjustified profits thanks to subsidies.
My brother-in-law, who lives in a rural area, spoke with some of his neighbours about getting together to put up a wind mill to power their homes. Not as big at as the 300 foot monstrosities the government has subsidized mind you but a fair size one. They looked at the regulations and found out it could not be done. The game is rigged to favour the friends of the Liberals. Like any scam Steve…follow the money.
Ontario Hydro no longer exists. When it did exist, rate increases were consistently below the rate of inflation until the Rae socialists got their hands on it in 1990. And who did they appoint as head of the place? Uncle Mo Strong.
Quite right, Tooner. It’s all about the advertising. No one reads the label on the box. And yes, Doug Reed has summed up perfectly the defects in the government program.
“Ontario Hydro no longer exists”
Yup, I know that. Hence my statement, “or whatever its constituent parts are known as today”
But I’ll always call it “Hydro”. Besides, a skunk by any other name surely smells as sweet. 😉
I could see one practical use for smart meters. Use them to real-time match the charging load of electric cars with available energy from designated “green” sources, like wind or solar. Set a sufficiently high price on car charging electricity that “green” power providers are encouraged to build and maintain their facilities, but, hopefully, low enough that electric cars are still seen as “cheaper to run” than gasoline cars. Does such a point actually exist?
You could have the smart meters set up to add or shed load on a minute-by-minute basis as “green” energy supply varied, so that it would not add instability to the grid upon which it is all piggybacked. And individual car chargers could be programmed to allow them to charge on “non-green” power, but at a premium rate, say double that of “green” power.
Do I advocate that such a thing be done? Only if the “green” community bears most of the costs, say about 85%. I’d be willing to pick the other 15% in the interest of greater grid stability.
Progressive energy policies need things like this because they are busy destroying our reserve generating capacity. It won’t work, but they can claim they tried. Blackouts and sky-high prices are inevitable now.
I explained it this way to a friend: you paint houses for a contractor who marks up your labour cost to the customer. A fellow named Marx said the difference between what my friend got and the contractor charged the client was the “surplus value of labour,” and Marx argued that the working “class” didn’t get their “fair share” of that surplus. The rise of the middle class and the fact my friend’s hourly labour charge is four times the surplus value of his labour were concepts apparently lost on Marx. He nonetheless stated that in order to redress this imbalance in fairness we needed a temporary “dictatorship of the proletariat” to pave the way to anarchic, communistic bliss where we all get to equally share the misery, I mean surpluses.
Because of that, we get all this shit. Oh yeah, and Keynes too.
While I have only quickly scanned the comments here I did, in fact, read the entire report. So, at the risk of repeating what has been said above….
This report is completely incomprehensible to much of the population of Ontario (of which I am one BTW). It contains plain English, very basic math and a few acronyms. Those three items and the amount of effort required to read such a lengthy (sarc) article are the factors that will allow the Lib government to keep screwing the Ontario public for the foreseeable future.
Kill me now.
Pretty much.
Sporty, you nailed, bingo!
In theory I agree with you, but there is not really that much you can do to shift your loads. When it first started we did laundry at off peak times. Don’t have a dishwasher. I thought about putting a timer on the chest freezer. You don’t need to open it that often, and if you put a timer on it to only run in off peak times it would eventually “train itself” to only run off peak. Frankly the savings are not worth the effort, specially considering that since smart meters came out, the off peak rates have increased a lot. There isn’t a huge difference any more between peak and off peak. To save electricity I got a gas stove. That saves me between 10 and 20 percent on my electricity. Due to equal billing and variable weather it’s hard to say what it has done to my gas bill. It has not noticeably changed. When I need a new drier I will get gas one. Most of my lighting is LED.I have lived in this house for 8 years and in that time my electricity bill has gone from 40 dollars a month to about 100.
It’s good to see you back, and in a big way.
I haven’t had the chance, yet, to read the report.
But, on the basis of what I hear, this could end well.
sounds like another criminal case of malfeasance by the liberals
BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU! Dont you feel a bit like Winston Smith right now?