Environmental and economic analysis of Ontario’s Standard Offer Program for small power producers

Many power authorities are actively pursuing clean or renewable energy distributed generation sources to meet future long-term demands. Consequently, many policies and initiatives have been introduced to spur private sector investment in these generator technologies. This paper examines the socio-economic effects (social cost, pollution, investor return) that these policies may have through changes in energy dispatch/contract/production by distribution companies. These effects are examined in the context of the Ontario system and the newly introduced Standard Offer Program and demonstrated on a realistic 18-bus system.