The Global Adjustment is an extra fee that Ontario electricity consumers pay that basically makes up the difference for the high rates that must be paid to wind farm power providers under contract and the wholesale price of power. That's a simplification, but there's more information here.
One of the interesting effects of the Global Adjustment is that it will be highest when the wind blows the most and demand is the least. The wind producers have to get paid and there is less cheaper power being used to lower the price. Here's the rates for the last nine months from the above site as of today:
January 4.25
Febuary 5.06
March 6.23
April 6.07
May 5.65
June 5.26
July 3.36
August 4.18
September 4.16
That's in cents per kilowatt hour. Note the March rate, a windy month without a lot of heat or air conditioning demand is close to double the July amount. So try to conserve power in March as you will end up paying more, even though perversely demand is low. HST is also applied to the Global Adjustment.
Also published at the above link is estimates for recent months. For October the estimate is 5.34 and 4.77 cents per kilowatt hour.
As more renewable solar and wind power comes online with guaranteed high rates per kilowatt hour, will the Global Adjustment go up? Good question. If overall demand trends down, then definitely, as less regularly priced power will be consumed and the renewable contracts still have to get paid. Another recession would be especially problematic with its concomitant reduction in power consumed. I'll watch for the January 2013 number of comparison
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