Car, Hydro, NatGas charts updated

Check out the links on the left "Graphs 2009-05-08" for new charts showing fuel consuption of our car as well as electrical consuption for the winter with our new Ground Source Heat Pump furnace.

Natural gas consumption has been zero for a while, the gas company come over a put a lock bolt on our meter. No gas bills.

Ontario's Darlington generation station offline

Looking at my Ontario Generation Charts, you can see that as of April 19-20 2008 the amount of nuclear power produced in Ontario has reduced, likely seasonally based on 2008 behaviour.

However, as of that date - the entire Darlington generation site is generating zero MW or power on all 4 of it's 1GW generators. This did not happen in 2008.

Very surprising. I can find not mention on www.ieso.ca or on the net for why this happened. Anyone know?

Earth Hour - Consuption vs. Generation

Purpose

Like this blog, I am here to present facts and explain them. In short - the public data shows no less Coal or Natural Gas was burned during Earth Hour. And yes, the Nuclear plants were still going full-tilt (in fact the Bruce-B Generator-5 increased production prior to the event).

Introduction

It's great to "do our part" and not consume electricity. But we need to realize that less consumption does not always result in less pollution.

Sounds like anti-Earth propaganda doesn't it? Let me explain by using Earth Hour as an example.

The notion is if we turn off our lights and use less electricity, we make less pollution. Forget for a second that florescent lights in office buildings are much more efficient than the soft glow of incandescent lights typically in homes. And forget that lighting is a very small portion of the total electrical demand.

The Data

Think of how the electricity is generated. In Ontario there are 5 major fuel types being used for generation:

• Nuclear (61%),
  
• Coal (2%),
  
• Oil/Natural Gas (9%),
  
• Hydro (26%)
  
• Wind (2%), and
  
• Pulp & Paper Waste (1%).

The Independent Electrical System Operator announced that during Earth Hour Ontario electrical demand dropped by 6% from the calculated expected demand.

And Here's The Catch...

Put yourself in IESO's shoes - you control the leavers that can crank up the generators.

• Your Nuclear generators can be shut down in about 60sec, but take 3 days to get back up to speed - can't touch them since they're your work-horse generators.
  
• Your Pulp&Paper and Wind generators produce a fraction of your capacity - don't bother turning them off.
  
• Your Natural Gas and Goal generators boil large vats of water into steam to spin turbines. These monsters can turn on faster than Nuclear, but they still take almost an hour to reach full power. (NatGas is a more complicated than this, but you get the idea)
  
• All you have left that you can control for this is to throttle down your Hydro generators which are very responsive to turn-off and turn-on commands (60sec!).

Conclusion

The irony is the fuel source perceived to be the cleanest - Hydro - is what gets turned off during Earth Hour because it's the only thing that can be turned on again as demand returns at the end of Earth Hour.

The graphs of the data provided by the IESO generators support this conclusion.

What would make IESO turn down the real polluters of its generation system? If Earth Hour was an all-day event.

Updated Diesel/Hydro/NatGas Graphs

With winter coming, and our heat pump installed. I'll be doing my best to keep the graphs section (to the top and left) up-to-date.

Natural Gas Speculation

I peeked around for discussion on natural gas proces and came across a site that sounded objective and reasonably researched (or at least read). They gave this chart of past natural gas prices and some projections on its future cost.



Their reasons for their prediction of 30% increase in natural gas in the next 6-8 months?

Lower production from new gas wells, less new drilling and depletion of older wells.

New electricity generation is usually gas fired. The gas to be used in planned natural gas generators in Ontario equal a quarter of TOTAL provincial annual demand.

Supply is flat and is expected to remain so, and demand is up.

Historical oil-to-gas ratio is 7.5, putting gas at $13 per Gigajoule

It's crystal ball gazing, but worth mentioning.

How to hookup a generator to a home

I got lots of traffic on my YouTube videos on Earth Day - lots of comments and emails too.

The most popular question was "How do you hook that up to a home?" Well, here's a diagram showing how.



Notice that I didn't mention anything about feeding back to the grid. Doing that is can make you some small money, but it's expensive to setup. In place of the DPDT (double pole double throw) switch you have a synchronizer to maintain freqency and phase alignment between your generator and the grid. Usually involves converting from AC to DC then back to AC at a loss of power and money from your pocket.

Tracking Power Generation in Ontario

An excellent site showing the electrical generation in Ontario is www.ieso.ca

They provide a metric dung load of information on:

1. %-age generation by type (hydro, nuclear, gas, coal, etc)


2. Maps showing where all the generating plants are (pdf, page 14)


3. %-age consuption by consumer group (home, business, industrial)


4. Seasonal peak consuptions and average demand by city


5. Historical top-20 peak daysGenerator availability plant-by-plant, day-by-day (2008-04-01)

And the awesomest demonstration of why the internet was invented: Live graphs of today's projected and actual electrical consuption!!!

Interesting things one can gleam from the website:

1. Ontario burns a lot of coal - 20.6% of total installed capacity - but plans exist to decommishon all coal by 2009
2. Ontario has been exporting more power than it brings in over the past two years - but there is still tight dependance on US for even distribution
3. There is a lot of nuclear that never turns off
4. Winter peak electrical demand is 90% of summer peak demand

All in all, very educational

Car Fuel Consuption Charts

Here are some historic charts of our fuel consumption in our cars. My wife is the daughter of an accountant - does it show?

Chart 1: Fuel Prices vs Time

• Red: Gas CAD per litre
• Purple: Diesel CAD per litre (post pump price jump)

Chart 2: Cumulative fuel volume purchased

• Pink: Gas (Ford Taurus)
• Black: Diesel (Jetta TDI)
  

Chart 3: Cumulative fuel volume purchased (just diesel)

Notice how fuel consumption per day does up when winter comes - efficiency goes down.

• Grey boxes: winter months
• Purple box: road trip from Ottawa to Florida
• Red box: summer
  

Chart 4: km per day

• Blue: Gas (Ford Taurus)
• Purple: Diesel (Jetta TDI)
  

Chart 5: km per day (just diesel)