07.21.2011 08:42 AM

It’s so hot

…but, at least, McGuinty’s approach is working:

Ontario will set temperature records today but won’t break any power use records (Heat-Wave)
Source: The Canadian Press
Jul 21, 2011 9:35


TORONTO – Ontario may be set to break some temperature records today, but it won’t be breaking any power demand records, despite all the air conditioners being cranked up.

The Independent Electricity System Operator predicts peak demand will hit 26,651 megawatts today, which won’t even be enough to crack the top ten peak demand days.

The all-time high was Aug. 1, 2006, when Ontario needed 27,005 megawatts of electricity.

IESO spokesman Terry Young says lower industrial demand is one of the reasons we won’t set any power records today despite the soaring heat and humidity.

And Young says conservation efforts are paying off, along with time-of-use pricing which does have people trying to move some of their electricity use to off-peak hours after 7 o’clock each evening.

The agency recommends people set their air conditioners to 26 degrees during the day today to conserve energy and save money.

INDEX: UTILITIES WEATHER ENVIRONMENT NATIONAL POLITICS

 

33 Comments

  1. Alvin says:

    “Encouraging” high-use businesses not to operate might help as well.

  2. RN200 says:

    The all-time high in 2006 occurred when the Liberals hadn’t yet completed their plan to totally trash Ontario’s economy. That job is down now so the demand for energy is also way down (along with all the fixed income seniors having to stay up to do their laundry at 1am). Nice work Dalton.

    • TDotRome says:

      What world do you live in? You think demand for energy is down? Where? I’d love to see that part of the universe. I can’t though, spaceships don’t fly to other planets, yet.

  3. ottawacon says:

    Not sure you should be so sanguine about the lower industrial use, that is at best a mixed judgement on Ontario policy.

    • Pat says:

      Or basic commentary on a manufacturing-based economy that was hit by a recession. To suggest that less of the industry would have left had the Tories been in government would be ludicrous.

      • ottawacon says:

        Even if we accept that no policy might have averted the loss of 300k manufacturing jobs(unlikely), trumpeting the byproduct as an outcome of successful energy policy is dubious at best. Given that increasing energy prices are a competitive burden, more than dubious.

        For me, the best thing that can be said about McGuinty’s energy policy is….look at the alternatives offered. Least worst.

      • Pat says:

        Who wants to move their operation to a province with terrible health care and a crap education system. With the Harris Tories that stuff tanked. In my work I do a fair amount of site selection research, and two of Ontario’s biggest strengths are the health and education systems (ie, don’t have to pay for full health plan, and good future workers produced every day). The reason Ontario tanked is that it is heavily manufaturing-centred. That is the reason why London, ON is in the tiolet, but many towns that weren’t so heavily reliant on manufacutring are okay. I can’t imagine that the Tories would have done much different in the face of this economic downturn, and they certainly couldn’t do anything about the set-to-fail distribution of Ontario’s economy.

  4. Dave Wells says:

    Lower industrial demand eh? Well, you were honest enough to leave that line in there. Many partisans would not have done that.

  5. dcardno says:

    …along with time-of-use pricing which does have people trying to move some of their electricity use to off-peak hours after 7 o’clock each evening

    To the extent that electricity use prior to 7:00 is more convenient (cooking, perhaps), or even necessary (air conditioning) then the impact of the plan is to reduce (albeit marginally) people’s standard of living. Nice work – great plan.

    • Paul says:

      Yeah, and what about people who work from home? They are getting shafted with a capital ‘S’ by this crooked “time of use” pricing:

      They are usually IT-types, so at least one computer and monitor would be on for 8 hours or more, right in the middle of “peak use” time. Then add in A/C so that life is bearable (sorry, but 26 degrees is like not having A/C at all.) I also used to multi-task when I worked from home, so I would do laundry during the day while I worked and not have to take a 2-hour chunk out of my evening to do it, or cook dinner in a slow-cooker so it would be ready when 6PM rolled around. Well, so much for that, too unless paying up the ass is something one enjoys.

      I’m sick and tired of being asked to lower my standard of living for some dubious benefit to the planet. This is the 21st century. We live in a country that is hot as hell in the summer and freezing cold in the winter. Get the power that Ontarians need online and at the most affordable cost possible, without crooked usage scams, carbon taxes, eco-fees and other crap added. End of story.

      • ottawacon says:

        Why should I subsidize your use of electrical power? Pay what it costs to generate/transmit/distribute when it is needed. Peak power is far more expensive at the margin than baseload power, especially hydroelectric baseload (which is the main reason why power at night is so much cheaper).

        Ontario Tories want socialism when it comes to the electricity they use (and the power companies they stuff with their cronies).

      • Chris says:

        If you’re working from home you’re a fool if you’re not counting in your added utility costs into your “hourly rate”.

        Somebody would be paying for that electricity no matter where you are working.

      • MedEditor says:

        Shafted how, pray tell?

        I’m running two home-based businesses. My computer runs 24/7 because it also acts as my fax machine (no dead tree use for me, as far as I can manage). I like summer too much to close my windows except on the very hottest days (last 36 hours, frex) — and then I only run the AC to 25 or 26 degrees. I’m very comfortable in my shorts and tee. Are you wearing a freaking suit and tie while working at home or what?

        As to “standard of living”, we still cook during the day, but we do try to run the dishwasher and laundry machines after 7 pm, and we have most of the “vampire” loads (2 TV, 2 satellite boxes, printers, scanners) either on timers or switched off when not actually in use. We use CFLs almost exclusively, and we invested in new energy-efficient appliances a few years ago.

        Oh, yeah, and we also compost and recycle to the point that we have to put out one bag of garbage every 3 weeks or so. (Costs me $2 per bag now collection has come off the property tax bill. That’s user-pay that I can live with.)

        Our Hydro TOU is 70% green, 15% yellow, 15% red this billing period, with no lowering of our standard of living. All your bellyaching is a sign of one thing only: pure laziness.

        • RN200 says:

          It would seem you measure standard of living differently than other people. But as long as your happy. For others the act of having to look at the clock before pushing the “on” button of their dishwasher or laundry dryer is by definition a change in the standard of living – look at the clock or pay more. The government has redefined it and you’ve done the lemming act, and then rationalized for yourself that nothing has changed.

          • MedEditor says:

            No rationalization or lemminghood involved. We live essentially the same life — with the same routines (except for sitting in an office 9 to 5) — that we’ve lived for more than 35 years. It’s called “home economics”. We do what’s good for our bank account and for our neighbourhood.

            You would seem both (a) to not care what it costs when you push the “on” button and (b) to reserve the right to whine about what it costs. Typical regressive thinking, to hold diametrically opposed opinions at the same time.

  6. Greg says:

    Yes, I picked up on the lower industrial demand too. If that means they are more efficient, fine. But, we all know it is more than that.

  7. Robbie says:

    Mr McGuinty has left the Premiers Conference here in the cool, temperate rain forest of BC to attend to some nasty fires back home. Now that he is no longer in attendance, and Mr Charest had a prior commitment, is this Conference still relevant or of value?

    http://www.ottawacitizen.com/McGuinty+skips+premier+meeting+over+forest+fires/5139377/story.html

  8. DB Smith says:

    It is a good thing in a Liberal kind of way, that under McGunity that Ontario has lost over 300,000 manufaturing jobs – can you imagine the strain on the Hydro system if these plants were still up and running.

    • Glass half empty in the DB Smith househol, I guess. Don’t let the facts get in the way of your narrative.

      I see him trying to jump start the next generation’s green economy, much to your apparent dismay.

    • Attack! says:

      Sigh. Again, as I pointed out to you a few days ago,

      http://warrenkinsella.com/2011/07/in-todays-sun-valuable/#comment-46725

      re: your previous claim about that

      http://warrenkinsella.com/2011/07/in-todays-sun-valuable/#comment-46689

      those are outdated and inaccurate stats you’re throwing around, there, too many dB’s.

      First, the 2009 estimate was for 322,000 manufacturing jobs lost from 2004 to 2008 for the whole of Canada, not just ON;

      Second, that was based just on the Labour Force Survey, which has since been recalibrated to reflect the last Census data (which took a while to get analyzed right) which ended up lowering the estimated number of total job losses;

      Third, if you look at some slightly more recent data, and look at just the actual production workers for plants, factories and mills — i.e., the actual manufacturing jobs (and not the management or the sales dept’s) — it was:

      only 100,000 jobs lost in Ontario b/w 2005 and 2008 (sorry, can’t find the corresponding figure for just ON in 2004, but the corresponding figure for all of Canada was just 27,000 higher, and ON’s share in any given year is less than half the total).

      http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/11-402-x/2010000/chap/man-fab/tbl/tbl04-eng.htm

      Fourth, all credible observers note that those job losses have almost nothing to do with local politics and almost everything to do with the global recession, the rising Canadian dollar, and the increased industrial capacity (and continuing low wages) of developing countries like China; in case you hadn’t noticed, the States and other ‘first world’ countries have been hemorrhaging manufacturing jobs like crazy, too, and now they’re not buying as many of our goods cuz they cost a third more than they used to.

      • ottawacon says:

        I don’t think you can exclude the support/management jobs from this particular discussion – if they were lost when the actual shop floor jobs disappeared, the economic point stands.

        That said, I agree with your fourth point – the McGuinty Government has failed to address a fierce headwind perhaps, but they did not make the headwind. On energy in particular, they have been horribly constrained by utterly inept Tory policy choices.

        • Attack! says:

          re: your claim that “the economic point stands” if we fold the white collar jobs involved in the manufacturing industry back in with the actual blue collar ones that were laid off…

          not so fast.

          Again, although I don’t have the provincial breakdowns (and I’m sure as heck not going to pay for the Cansim tables myself to get them), the same Canada Year Book 2010 I drew from above contains enough data to show that the losses were only 2/3ds as bad as DB’s been claiming.

          This Table in, and the Manufacturing chapter itself, show that the Total number of salaried & pd. hourly employees engaged in Manufacturing in Canada as a whole dropped less than 400,000 from 2004 to 2009 (from 1,870,096 to 1,485,807), with most of that occurring in the last Q of ’08 and 1sr of ’09, before stabilizing.

          http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/11-402-x/2010000/chap/man-fab/tbl/tbl03-eng.htm

          http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/11-402-x/2010000/chap/man-fab/man-fab-eng.htm

          And the provincial breakdowns I cited above show that for the actual production workers, about 45% of them are in ON…. so, for the sake of argument, lets say about half of those 385,000 job losses over those 5 years — i.e., 200,000 — were based in Ontario.

          _My_ point is that 200 is a lot less than 300k, and people making polemical points about such figures shouldn’t play fast and loose with them,

          particularly then they’re just based on an old, third hand report (a 2008 National Post article, summarizing a TD Bank report, which was extrapolating, likely from StatCan labour force data, which itself has since been revised).

  9. Mulletaur says:

    I really miss the feeling of community and fellowship that we had in my hood while the power was out for 3 FREAKIN’ DAYS in 2003. We really need those Hudak Conservatives back so they can give us our sense of community back …

  10. Steve T says:

    Perhaps, rather than patting McGuinty on the back, the compliments should be focused on the Ontario companies and individuals who reduced their power usage.

  11. Phil in London says:

    “IESO spokesman Terry Young says LOWER INDUSTIRAL DEMAND is one of the reasons we won’t set any power records today…”

    And the little people (Ontario manufacturing labourers no loger collecting a paycheque) danced!

    The king has ordered the collection of chicken shit and mayonaise and is serving it as chicken salad.

  12. DB Smith says:

    I know it is hot out, but the heat does not change the truth, as Ontario lost 180,000 manufacturing jobs prior to the recession and has continued to shed jobs in 2009, 2010 and 2011 under the Liberal watch.

    Ontario could lose another 250,000 factory jobs and Quebec 100,000 over the next five years if Canada’s manufacturing sector shrinks in line with other major industrialized countries, Toronto-Dominion Bank said.

    Ontario has already lost 180,000 positions (one in six) and Quebec 140,000 (one in five) since reaching a peak in 2000 as the Canadian dollar soared toward par — and more importantly — low-cost producers such as China became fierce competitors.

    Read more: http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpposted/archive/2008/02/13/ontario-could-face-250-000-more-manufacturing-job-losses-quebec-100-000-td.aspx#ixzz1Sr4ws8Fy

    Statistics Canada reported that employment levels in Ontario had fallen by 232,000 since October 2008.

    Over half of these job losses were in the manufacturing sector. Southern Ontario’s manufacturing sector has seen a steady structural decline since 2004. FedDev Ontario’s programs help Southern Ontario’s manufacturing sector face these new economic realities and compete more effectively in the global marketplace by bolstering productivity levels through investment and innovation.

    http://www.feddevontario.gc.ca/eic/site/723.nsf/eng/00239.html

    OTTAWA–A new study says Canada lost nearly 322,000 manufacturing jobs from 2004 to 2008, or more than one in seven.

    Ontario was hit hardest of the provinces, losing 198,600 or 18.1 per cent of manufacturing jobs.

    http://www.thestar.com/article/590579

    • JenS says:

      Uh, DB, I think you just proved Attack! correct (and yourself wrong) on every point. Impressive.

    • Justin says:

      So, what’s the CON’s magic wand solution to the lack of jobs? Tax cuts for the rich? Well that hasn’t worked out so well down south.

      • DB Smith says:

        Well Harris the Conservative was able to increase manufactoring jobs in Ontario after NDP Bob Rae was gone, so it is not a magic wand at all, just get rid of the NDP and Liberals and the Jobs return.

        http://www.tcu.gov.on.ca/eng/labourmarket/currenttrends/docs/annual/annual2009.pdf

        Ontario lost 161,200 jobs accounting for 58.0% of the 276,900 jobs lost in Canada. This was the largest drop in employment since the early 1990s.

        While most of Ontario?s industries suffered employment declines in 2009, the manufacturing sector experienced a disproportionate effect, with its employment declining by 104,400 (11.6%), the largest drop on record for this industry.
        Employment losses in this industry represented 65.0% of the provincial job losses and 38.0% of the total national job declines in 2009.

        • Attack! says:

          Bonehead. That’s fallacious reasoning, called “post hoc, ergo hoc” (‘[it happened] after this, [so, gee, d’uh, it must’ve been] because of this’).

          But let’s see whether you have ANY consistency on it:

          Although they had to make some cuts in the mid-90s to deal with the huge debt the Conservatives had amassed, the Canadian economy was humming along nicely under the Liberals from 2000 to 2005 and the government was running surpluses and paying down the debt…

          and then the Harper Conservatives took over and we were plunged into a recession which lost us about a million jobs and a hundred billion more in debt.

          So all we need to do to become prosperous again is get rid of that reckless Conservative federal government.

  13. DB Smith says:

    Jen, can you add? – 200,000 jobs were lost 2004 – 2008 and that from 2008 to 2010 another 116,000 were lost (232,000 since October 2008 Over half of these job losses were in the manufacturing sector.) and I did not count the job losses from 2000 to 2004 – so I proved myself right

    • Attack! says:

      But can you read?

      I’ve written, repeatedly, that the numbers you’re drawing from are a combination of estimates and projections from different intervals (some as long ago as 2008) and applying to different segments (just factory jobs? or all jobs within the manufacturing industry, which can include the cafeteria workers, the managers, the accountants, the salesmen), which have all since been revised by the original source, StatCan, itself.

      So, just to settle the matter, here, I even broke down and forked over the $3 to get the data straight from the horse’s mouth (instead of its ass) and bought the relevant CANSIM table 282-0088 that this latest free table is based on

      http://www40.statcan.gc.ca/l01/cst01/labr67g-eng.htm

      As it turns out, you’re right — or, actually, it’s even worse than you’ve stated — but only by fluke, the way you keep offering old quotes in the present tense without quotation marks or proper attribution, and knitting the various sources from different data series and time frames together.

      So, these are the (seasonally adjusted) total number of people employed in the manufacturing industry as a whole in Ontario for June of each year, followed by the difference from the last year, and the cumulative job losses relative to 2004 (the Libs’ first full year in office):

      (in thousands):

      2004: 1,110.8; 18.8 (base year)
      2005: 1,066.5; -44.3 = 44.3 fewer than ’04
      2006: 1,022.0; -44.5 = 88.8
      2007: 929.8; -92.2 = 181.0
      2008: 915.1; -14.7 = 195.7
      2009 : 774.0; -141.1 = 336.8
      2010 : 767.9; -6.1 = 342.9
      2011: 788.3; 20.4 = 322.5

      So, yes, there was a huge loss b/w June ’08 & ’09 in partic., but note, there was hardly any loss the year after that, and there are now 20,000 more manufacturing jobs in Ontario this year than there were last year, so things are picking up.

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