Matched with customer load demands, Nova Scotia Power must maintain a diversity in its electricity generation mix to ensure responsible grid management.
During the Buchanan government, our addiction to cheap electricity produced from Cape Breton coal was established, creating an 80 per cent dependence on the use of coal for all our electrical needs by around 1990.
Correction of this imbalance has occurred over the past 10 years and diversification continues. The province has compelled NSP to buy wind energy that is well beyond a responsible portion of the generation mix, creating a new imbalance of intermittent wind energy, which will impact resource availability and cost.
We have all the electricity (current and committed projects) we need to take us up to 2030. This is the message in the Provincial Electricity Review Report (April 30, 2015) and the NSP Integrated Resource Plan (2014).
The NDP government allowed itself to be pushed by the wind energy industry and now we have too much wind for an efficient and balanced electricity generation mix, not to mention the lack of a democratic process for the rural community residents in the Community Feed-In Tariff (COMFIT) Program.
Hopefully in the future when John Merrick, the province’s Consumer Advocate, provides precautionary overview, there will be more respect for the Utility and Review Board concerns.
Warren Peck,
Black River Road, Kings County
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2015/08/26/in-a-wind-jam/