But Minnesota Power, the main electrical utility serving the part of Minnesota that borders Ontario, gets only a ‘’very small'' proportion of its power from the province, company spokesperson Amy Rutledge said.
Minnesota Power bought only about $300,000 worth of electricity from Ontario last year, and only for four months out of the year. The utility serves over 150,000 customers, mostly with power it generates itself in Minnesota, she said. While it gets about 11% of its power supply from Manitoba Hydro, she said, that’s not affected by Ontario’s announcement.
‘‘We really expect any impact on our customers to be negligible,‘’ Rutledge said.
Midcontinent Independent System Operator — the organization that manages a regional power grid that stretches from Manitoba to Minnesota to Louisiana — also expects little effect, spokesman Brandon Morris said. MISO gets under half its power from Canada, and less than half of that comes from Ontario, he said.
Ford’s office said the new market rules require any generator selling electricity to the U.S. to add a 25% surcharge. Ontario’s government expects it to generate revenue of $300,000 Canadian dollars ($208,000) to $400,000 Canadian dollars ($277,000) per day, ‘’which will be used to support Ontario workers, families and businesses.‘’
The new surcharge is in addition to the federal government’s initial $30 billion Canadian dollars ($21 billion) worth of retaliatory tariffs applied on items like American orange juice, peanut butter, coffee, appliances, footwear, cosmetics, motorcycles and certain pulp and paper products.