Ontario’s plans to buy additional renewable generation capacity under its Large Renewable Procurement (LRP) program are moving ahead and being refined through consultation. As a result of the January 1 merger between agencies, ownership and management of the process has been transferred from its original home at the Ontario Power Authority to the new IESO. The start date of the LRP I RFP is not yet established, but as of this writing, the government anticipated posting the final LRP I RFP and final LRP I Contract in February 2015, and executing contracts later in the year. The OPA released draft rules and contract in November 2014, and invited comment on them, with a deadline of December 19. Staff at the IESO are currently analyzing comments from stakeholders and working to finalize the RFP. Through ministerial directives, the province has set targets of 300 MW for On-Shore Wind, 140 MW for solar, 75 MW for waterpower, and 50 MW for bioenergy in the first round of the LRP process.
APPrO has assembled a Working Group of applicants who have provided detailed input to the OPA and IESO at every stage of the LRP process. The APPrO group retained the services of Jason Chee-Aloy of Power Advisory LLC and submitted detailed comments on the draft RFP and contract on December 19. APPrO has also co-ordinated input to the OPA and IESO amongst other generator organizations including CanWEA, CanSIA, OWA and the Biogas Association. The five bodies met with the OPA in December and submitted a joint letter to the IESO in January.
The joint letter from the associations was focused on “enhanced consultation” related to the LRP. It said, “to be truly effective in a technical high-value field like LRP, further consultations will need to be structured in a way that allows for more systematic consideration of technical questions in detail. We would like to reiterate our previous recommendation that in addition to broad information session with webinars, the IESO host a set of focused technical meetings with experts from the pool of Qualified Applicants and industry associations, to work on relatively specialized matters. We would therefore like to request your collaboration in setting up meetings of technical experts, to supplement the other worthy consultative efforts already underway. We believe that time is of the essence and that meetings of this nature should be scheduled as soon as possible.”
Officials at the IESO hosted a pair of webinars on LRP on January 20 and 22. Details of those webinars may be found on the IESO website under Stakeholder Engagement > generation procurement > Large Renewable Procurement.