Ontario IESO Announces Large Renewable Energy Projects

Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator has listed contracts for over 450 MW of renewable energy projects, with impressively low weighted average prices.

The Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) released the list of 16 contracts earlier this month — contracts offered under the country’s Large Renewable Procurement (LRP), “a competitive process for procuring large renewable energy projects generally greater than 500 kilowatts.”

In total, the 16 contracts represent a total capacity of 454.885 MW, and are broken up with weighted average prices as follows:

• five wind contracts totaling 299.5 MW, with a weighted average price of 8.59 cents/kWh (USD 6.61 cents)
• seven solar contracts totaling 139.885 MW, with a weighted average price of 15.67 cents/kWh (USD 12.06 cents)
• four hydroelectric contracts totaling 15.5 MW, with a weighted average price of 17.59 cents/kWh (USD 13.54 cents)

News of the solar projects has already been covered, highlighting the low average price, but the wind contracts are even lower.

“This LRP process introduced strong competition among developers of large renewable projects, helping to drive down price and secure clean, reliable generation for the province,” said Bruce Campbell, President and CEO, IESO.

The full list of project locations and the developers currently attached to the projects can be found here.

The IESO also made note of the more than 80% of the projects which include participation from one or more Aboriginal communities, including five projects with more than 50% Aboriginal participation. More than 75% of the proposals also received support from local municipalities, with more than 60% receiving support from adjoining landowners.

Renewable energy costs only seem to be dropping every time a new competitive process is finalized, and the IESO’s work seems to only be furthering this trend.