by Cameron Smith

 

I have a friend who’s a marketing consultant, and he tells me the first thing he does with a new client is to look at everything the client has written. “What I almost always find,” he says, “is there’s a difference between what they do, and what they say they do.”

It’s not that the clients deliberately misrepresent themselves, he says. Most of the time, they don’t realize that their deeds don’t match how they describe themselves.

Maybe that’s the problem at the Ontario Power Authority.

The OPA says all the right things about renewable energy and projects that combine heat and power — call them micropower projects for ease of reference. But the proof lies in the pudding, and OPA’s micropower program is faltering because of an inability to connect projects to the province’s electricity grid.

There are technical reasons for this. In some cases power lines are full to capacity and can’t accommodate more electricity. In other cases, the problem lies with transformer stations that were built to a standard that often means no additional electricity can be handled. And even where connecting to the grid is possible, there are often high levies charged for connecting.

So the issue for Ontario is whether the distribution system should be overhauled at considerable effort and expense, or whether the full potential of micropower should be largely ignored.

The OPA has demonstrated that it wants to maintain the centralized framework for supplying electricity that has existed in Ontario since electricity came under public control. This framework is based on having massive generating stations that deliver base-load electricity across the province in huge transmission corridors.

OPA’s present plan, which calls for refurbishing old nuclear stations and adding a very big new one at Darlington, would result in about 70 per cent of Ontario’s annual consumption being supplied through nuclear power. Obviously, OPA’s preferred strategy is to have big suppliers and centralized transmission.

Micropower is different. It calls for a decentralized structure, supplying electricity from hundreds, even thousands of local sources, with short delivery distances. It requires a spiderweb distribution system where electricity from any source can be routed in many different directions according to need.                                                                                                                                                       

The two systems are not mutually exclusive. It’s possible to design something that would take advantage of the best from both. But — and this appears to be at the core of OPA’s reluctance to fully embrace micropower — it would inevitably result in a smaller role for nuclear power.

To get the best of both worlds, micropower has to be regarded as absolutely essential, and unfortunately, OPA seems to be treating it simply as a nice add-on.

If micropower were seen as essential, there would be a push to get the most out of it, and this would require a serious overhaul of Ontario’s distribution system — which is not happening. So micropower, though highly touted by OPA, is languishing.

The Ontario Sustainable Energy Association wants to change this. It’s urging Queen’s Park to bring in a Green Energy Act which would reorganize the distribution system and revise how micropower electricity is priced.

The suggestion has caught the eye of George Smitherman, Ontario’s new super-minister of energy and infrastructure , who said last week he is open to considering it. He has a reputation for being impatient and tough — which could be just what’s needed.