October Electricity Demand Drops 2.8% YOY

Canada’s demand for electricity declined 2.8% in October from the same month in 2014 to 40.7 million megawatt hours (MWh). Meanwhile, electricity generation decreased 0.7% to 44.7 million MWh, largely driven by declines in Ontario.

Exports of electricity to the United States rose nearly 20% to 4.6 million MWh in October, primarily driven by larger exports from Manitoba and British Columbia. This was the 12th consecutive year-over-year increase in exports to the United States. Imports declined 17.2% to 0.6 million MWh on lower receipts from British Columbia.

Chart 1: Electricity generation and consumption

In Ontario, generation levels declined 20.2% from the same month in 2014 to 9.7 million MWh. Outages at nuclear power plants led to a 26.9% decline in generation to 5.9 million MWh of electricity. Hydro generation declined by more than 10% to 2.6 million MWh. To supplement lower generation levels, Ontario purchased 1.1 million MWh from other jurisdictions — the most electricity purchased by the province since July 2008.

Conversely, Quebec’s generation levels rose 10.0% to 15.5 million MWh in October. The gain was widespread across all types of generation. While nearly one-third of the increase was used to meet higher demand within the province, the remaining portion was used to increase deliveries to both the United States and other provinces — predominantly Ontario.

Source: Statistics Canada, http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/151221/dq151221a-eng.htm?cmp=mstatcan