Ontario will slap a 25% export tax on electricity it sends to 1.5 million homes in Minnesota, Michigan and New York in retaliation for U.S. tariffs, said Doug Ford, leader of the Canadian province. Ford added that he will direct energy producers to shut down the exports entirely if President Trump

Canada’s province of Ontario will slap a 25% export tax on electricity it sends to 1.5 million homes in Minnesota, Michigan and New York, in retaliation for President Trump’s tariffs, said Doug Ford, Ontario’s leader.

Ford added that he will direct the province’s energy producers to shut down the exports entirely if Trump moves ahead with even more tariffs on April 2. He said he would direct his minister of energy to redirect energy from an Ontario nuclear reactor to local manufacturers instead.

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  • chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world
    7·
    2 days ago

    This is what he originally wanted to do. My guess is that the engineers said it ain’t gonna happen.

    If you disconnect a big part of the grid then you end up with way too much power being produced for the rest of the grid. If you aren’t able to shut down generators in time then you can severely damage the equipment on the grid and cause cascading failures that take down the entire grid.

    One major outage I remember was the 2003 Northeast Blackout. I recall having to barbecue dinner for a couple of days while waiting for power to be restarted. Had to spend a lot of time outside because the indoor heat was brutal without air conditioning!

    • Darkassassin07@lemmy.caEnglish
      2·
      2 days ago

      Well yeah; you don’t just flip a switch and disconnect at a whim, you’ve got to reduce generation in sync with shedding load to keep the grid balanced. It can and should still be done though.

      The problem is producers ofc don’t want to shut down, that’s lost profit for them. I think they should bear it in support of Canada’s independence though.