Electric power statistics, September 2015
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Released: 2015-11-26
Canada's demand for electricity declined 3.7% from September 2014 to 38.5 million megawatt hours (MWh) in September. Lower demand contributed to the 2.3% decrease in total generation, as power plants produced 43.7 million MWh for the month.
Exports of electricity to the United States rose 7.5% to 5.8 million MWh on a year-over-year basis, as a result of greater shipments from both British Columbia and Quebec. However, lower exports from Ontario tempered the growth. Imports from the United States declined 7.4% from the same month a year earlier to 0.7 million MWh in September.
Chart 1
Electricity generation and consumption
Ontario was the main contributor to the national decrease in electricity generation, as output declined 17.0% from September 2014 to 10.3 million MWh. The main contributors to the decline in Ontario were nuclear and hydro generation. Plant outages helped push nuclear generation down 22.7% to 6.6 million MWh, while hydro output fell 9.8% to 2.7 million MWh.
Conversely, power generation was up in Quebec (+7.0%) and British Columbia (+11.9%). These two provinces, which are primarily powered by hydroelectricity, used the higher supply of electricity to increase exports to the United States as demand in both provinces decreased.
Note to readers
The purpose of this release is to produce a consistent monthly indicator of the supply of electricity in Canada, a key input in the calculation of monthly gross domestic product.
Total net electricity generation for Canada, the provinces and the territories combines all of the electricity generated from all sources, including hydro, steam, nuclear, internal combustion, wind, solar and tidal.
Total available electricity is the total electricity generation, minus deliveries, plus receipts of electricity.
All data on imports and exports are provided directly by the National Energy Board.
Data for May to August 2015 have been revised.
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