John Spears
Toronto Star
March 8, 2005

Ontario’s electricity transmission wires are more than half a century old and "appear to present a danger to public safety," says a report prepared by watchdog group Energy Probe.

"There is now a significant risk of prolonged customer blackouts in the event of severe weather," it warns.

The report cites an assessment prepared by Ontario Hydro in 1997, shortly before the company was broken into separate generation and transmission units.

At the time, company officials noted that many hydro lines "were built in the late 1940s after World War II and are now approaching the end of their useful life. . . . As the condition of these lines is allowed to deteriorate beyond their useful life, without any remedy, the exposure to safety hazards will increase and public safety will be compromised."

Most of Ontario’s transmission system is operated by the provincially owned Hydro One.

Hydro One spokesperson Peter Gregg said in an interview that the Energy Probe report doesn’t mention all of the company’s activities since the 1997 report.

"We’ve been actively investing in the reliability of the transmission and distribution system," he said.

Energy Probe notes that the Ontario Energy Board, which regulates Hydro One, slashed the company’s spending on asset renewal in 1999.

It then asked for a detailed assessment of the condition of the company’s assets to be prepared by 2001, but the assessment has never been presented.

Energy Probe says a discussion paper on the province’s transmission system prepared for the energy minister late last year misunderstands the scope of the problem.

The ministry says growth in power demand is putting stress on the transmission system, when, in fact, decades of under-investment in the system is to blame, Energy Probe argues. The backlog now amounts to billions of dollars of work, it says.

Gregg said Hydro One has spent heavily on its transmission system, investing $289 million in capital equipment in 2003 and $260 million in 2002.

The 1997 Ontario Hydro report "was eight years ago," he said. "It’s a new company since then."

In Toronto, Hydro One is building an underground link to connect the eastern and western halves of the city to improve the flow of power, Gregg said.

It has also built a big new transformer station to compensate for the impending loss of the Lakeview generating station, due to close next month.