Lawrence Solomon
National Post
January 24, 2009
Why are the city’s power outages double those of London?
Some 250,000 Torontonians lost their electricity last week, about half of them for 18 to 24 hours. Had this power blackout happened in London or any other part of the U.K., each residential customer forced to endure such an extended hardship would have received £50 (about $92) in compensation. In the U.K., the public sees such compensation as simple justice — why shouldn’t the power company be held accountable? This simple justice is unavailable to Torontonians who rely on city-owned Toronto Hydro, even though their hardship last week far exceeded anything the U.K. ordinarily experiences — the power loss also disabled home furnaces, no small matter with temperatures at -20 degrees centigrade. Ninety-two dollars in compensation would have provided meaningful relief to many — the poor whose food spoiled with the loss of refrigeration, those forced to take taxis because the subway wasn’t running, those who lost a day of work because the power failure shut down their employer in Toronto’s downtown.
But the biggest effect of those $92 payments would have been to make power blackouts rare and the power company caring. In Toronto, customers were kept in the dark by Toronto Hydro, which provided next to no information about when the system might be restored: Those who phoned were put on hold, those who checked the utility website found stale information that aided no one in deciding what arrangements to make for themselves, their children and their pets — meals would need to be planned, warm refuges and alternate accommodations found. What information website visitors did find focussed on the responsibility of customers: their need to plan for blackouts in advance so that they aren’t caught off guard, without adequate provisions for themselves, their grandparents, their pets; their need to check the batteries and to keep at least one cell phone; their need to purchase surge protectors to protect their equipment; their need to refill medical prescriptions, plus good advice on how to use a personal backup power generator, which a surprising number of Torontonians now have.
The responsibility that Toronto Hydro might have to the community — to advise customers of the circumstances they face on a timely basis, to meet guaranteed standards of performance, to compensate customers if standards aren’t met, to be accountable by publishing statistics on the number of outages suffered in the past and by publishing targets for improved performance in the future — was nowhere evident. What was evident was empty PR about Toronto Hydro’s green credentials — the biodiesel in its vehicles and the paper recycling in its offices. And mention of Project Rebuild — its lacklustre effort to upgrade its aged, derelict system, much of it a half-century and more old.
Like Toronto, the U.K. once had a derelict state-owned electricity system. Then the U.K. government privatized the power system and created an outstanding regulator to foster competition and enforce standards. Compensation such as the £50 payments to individuals (£100 for businesses) was but one of many regulatory innovations that were introduced. The derelict system was soon transformed into a modern marvel that gave the public the two things it wanted most: decreased costs and increased reliability.
How much better is a U.K. city at keeping the lights on than Toronto? With the exception of short interruptions of three minutes or less, London customers can expect to have their service interrupted an average of once every three years, the length of interruption averaging 40 minutes per year. The stats for Toronto Hydro customers are not as bright. Not only do Toronto customers face two interruptions per year, and not only will these two keep them in the dark for an average of 80 minutes a year, these stats exclude what our power industry calls “Major Event Days,” an industry formula that effectively eliminates the utility’s two or three worst blackouts of the year. Last week’s blackout, in other words, will not appear in next year’s stats as part of the two interruptions that Torontonians suffered, or the 80 minutes they lost! London has no such Major Event Days.
Would making Toronto Hydro pay $92 in compensation encourage the utility to smarten up, the way it incented those in London? Not likely. Toronto Hydro doesn’t need to care about its customers because it is a monopoly and it is owned by the city of Toronto: If Toronto Hydro paid compensation to Torontonians, it would simply recover that money by either raising the power rates or, through the city, by raising their taxes — unlike in the U.K., there are no private shareholders to take the hit if their customers are discomforted. During the blackout last week, Toronto Mayor David Miller was even quicker than his utility in scolding the public for being unprepared, and even more reluctant to be pinned down on when power might be restored, lest he be held accountable for the utility’s failure to provide reliable information.
Blackouts, the mayor and the company pretend, are inevitable. People
should learn to live with them. And they are right, as long as the
utility stays in public hands, and remains unaccountable.
Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and Urban Renaissance Institute, and author of Toronto Sprawls.
Photo: With the subway blacked out, Toronto commuters wait for buses. (National Post photo)
Energy Probe 