On January 17 the IESO announced that it would be leading a new consultation process on a technical initiative to support long-term planning. Starting in late January, interested parties will be able to engage with the IESO on the development of the annual “20 Year Planning Outlook.” The Ontario Planning Outlook (OPO) is a technical report created by the IESO that assesses system capacity, reliability, operations, transmission and distribution over a 20 year period. The last Outlook was published in 2016 and served as the primary technical input into the previous government’s now outdated Long Term Energy Plan (LTEP). There will be opportunities during the engagement to provide feedback on components of the planning outlook and for the sector to learn more about IESO planning processes.
Chris Benedetti of the Sussex Strategy Group noted that, “This update of the IESO’s planning assumptions has long been anticipated by industry stakeholders. Driven in part by the changing priorities of the new Progressive Conservative government, including impacts on conservation policies, electricity prices, supply and contracting, the IESO will need to refresh its assumptions around the future of Ontario’s system to incorporate new imperatives. This process will clarify the IESO’s perspective on issues like conservation targets and demand forecasts, as well as the amount and timing of any new supply or transmission resources.”
The IESO noted that a significant focus of the first meeting, held on January 31, was to “provide an opportunity for feedback on the reasonableness of assumptions and methodologies used for the demand forecast.”
Industry experts have observed that the practical application of any initiative of this nature is likely to be affected by the provincial government’s approach to energy planning. There is no doubt that assembling a dependable and comprehensive data set will be indispensable for any planning system. However the specific data sets collected and format in which the data is assembled for use will depend on provincial planning priorities and the structure of the planning process.
Under the IESO’s current plans, the final 2019 planning outlook will be released in mid-September 2019. Prior to that, in March and April, the IESO plans to a) present the scope, approach and methodology of the 2019 planning outlook, b) inform stakeholders of key changes, and c) identify areas where further stakeholder education is required.
Under current legislation, the Ontario Ministry of Energy is required to produce a long term energy plan in 2020, and to conduct consultation with stakeholders prior to that. The OPO consultation could assist in meeting such compliance obligations. Alternatively, with legislative change, the OPO could be used for input to a different type of planning process.
For further information, readers are invited to visit the stakeholder engagement section of the IESO website, under “20-Year Planning Outlook.”