Toronto Star
August 14, 2004

Sure, if the bizarre series of events that triggered last year’s massive blackout were to be repeated

All Dave Goulding had on his mind about 4 p.m. last Aug. 14 was getting home early.

But as the chief executive of the agency that ties Ontario’s power system together navigated his car along Shuter St. in downtown Toronto, traffic slowed to a crawl as the traffic lights suddenly went dark.

Goulding’s cellphone promptly rang, with the news that there was a power failure — and a big one. His first instinct was to head for the main control room of the Independent Electricity Market Operator (IMO). Then, he realized his gas tank was almost empty and he might not have enough to reach the IMO’s suburban control centre.

He headed back to his downtown headquarters, only to find that it was in the dark.

Goulding and his staff decamped for the next few hours to a nearby hotel, where the lights were on, to keep in touch as best they could.

In Ottawa, staff at Canada’s nuclear safety agency, who oversee the country’s nuclear generators, faced the same problem.

Power to the building housing the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission had been knocked out. Without backup power, both computer and telephone connections went down, leaving the agency with no way of knowing how Ontario’s nuclear generating stations were coping with the blackout.

In some cases, the answer was: not quite as well as they might have. Nuclear stations rely on power from the main grid to run internal communications and operating systems.

As the grid disintegrated, the reactors had to be disconnected from the system because there were no longer circuits capable of handling their power. That in turn required the reactors to throttle back to about 60 per cent power.

But because the flow of power into the stations’ own electronic and mechanical systems was disrupted, controlling the reactors was difficult. At the Pickering and Darlington stations, operators were forced to shut most of their reactors down completely instead of merely easing back.

But the shutdowns would cast a shadow over the province for a week, as reactors that have been shut down completely must be restarted slowly — a process that turned out to take days.

Power problems were also hampering one of Hydro One’s important control centres in northwest Toronto. A backup diesel generator failed to kick in, leaving staff in the dark initially as they tried to assess the problems and resurrect the transmission system. Hydro One would later be fined when it was discovered the backup generator hadn’t been tested as required by reliability rules.

In the end, the glitches in Ontario proved to be headaches rather than catastrophes. Attention swung to First Energy, the Ohio utility where failure to trim trees near power lines had triggered the blackout, and a chain of errors and sloppiness at First Energy and grid operators that turned the collapse in Ohio into a chain reaction that blacked out 50 million people in Canada and the U.S.

But the problems raised questions about Ontario’s ability to cope with a failure as another Aug. 14 arrived and the question was raised: Could the big blackout happen again?

Energy minister Dwight Duncan cautions that no system is immune to failure.

"Something could happen. Something could go wrong," he says. "Who would have thought that trees overgrowing wires in Ohio would shut down the whole grid?"

But Duncan takes a more optimistic tone on prospects for another blackout.

"What I can say is that on the balance of probabilities, I’m confident there won’t be," he says.

Perhaps a more crucial question is: If a serious failure does happen again, can it be better contained, with a faster recovery?

The people running Ontario’s system say improvements have been made.

But they still warn that one of the key underlying causes of the blackout has not been definitively addressed, and is being held hostage by U.S. politics.

First, the good news.

Ontario has more homegrown power at its disposal today than it did last year.

One mothballed nuclear generating unit at the Pickering A station has returned to service, as well as two more at the privately run Bruce nuclear plant. In addition, a new gas-fired generator has been commissioned in Windsor. The gain: 2,600 megawatts. (On a day of moderate demand, Ontario needs about 20,000 megawatts of power; when demand is high, the requirement is about 25,000 megawatts.)

Goulding and his staff at the IMO have also refined procedures for dealing with emergencies. When the power system is under stress, one solution is to cut demand by disconnecting large power users.

Better plans have been drawn up in consultation with major power users so both they and the IMO know who can be disconnected at short notice in the event of an emergency in order to contain the collapse of the system.

Peter McBride of the Ontario Mining Association says some mine operators are considering the idea of being disconnected at short notice. But details must first be negotiated on how they would be compensated for disruption and lost production in return for their willingness to take power cuts.

Elsewhere, agencies like the IMO and the nuclear safety commission have been shoring up their backup power capabilities and strengthening communications links so they won’t collapse if the grid does go down.

Ontario Power Generation, which operates most of the province’s generators, recently announced it will spend $100 million to improve backup generation at its Pickering B nuclear station so it’s better equipped to handle emergencies.

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`The lesson of the blackout … is that electric power systems need good housekeeping, or they fall down’

Tom Adams, Energy Probe

 

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And Hydro One, which runs the transmission system, has just opened a new control centre near Barrie that is less vulnerable to blackouts. It consolidates operations from a dozen smaller centres sprinkled around the province, which should improve co-ordination in case of a big emergency, says Hydro One’s Peter Gregg.

To ensure that the centre can remain in touch with its network of 14,000 pieces of equipment, the centre has five independently routed fibre optic links to the outside world —three connected to Hydro One’s own fibre optic network and two others through Bell Canada facilities.

Although the $125 million centre with a staff of 200 has been in the works for three years and wasn’t built specifically in response to the blackout, Gregg says it should be able to better handle the problems that hampered the company’s staff in the initial stages of last year’s blackout.

The new generation, increased backup power and better co-ordination all mean the power system should be easier to restart in the event of a massive collapse, Duncan says.

Goulding agrees: "We’re pretty comfortable. Even if we hit record demands, we should be able to manage them."

But problems remain.

One of the issues is Ontario’s connections to its neighbours — especially to the U.S., which supplies much of the power that Ontario imports on days of high demand.

Ontario generators and utilities are subject to strict reliability standards and can be fined by the IMO if they fail to meet them. Such is not the case in the U.S.

An energy bill introduced in Congress last year that would have established mandatory standards has bogged down and was never passed.

"The biggest single issue at this time is the lack of the passage of legislation south of the border," Goulding says.

Duncan agrees: "The lack of mandatory reliability standards in the U.S. still troubles me." U.S. regulators are doing what they can to hold utilities to improve standards, but without the backing of legislation their power is circumscribed.

And as long as Canadian and U.S. systems are closely interconnected, the danger of a U.S. system collapse slopping over the border continues.

To boost Canadian energy security, Duncan has been floating the idea with fellow energy ministers of building a much more robust east-west transmission system to lessen dependence on the U.S. and open up new hydroelectric sites in Canada.

He’d like to get formal talks on the idea underway by next year.

That’s a long-range solution. In the meantime, some experts say there are simpler, less glamorous measures.

Tom Adams, executive director of Energy Probe, notes that last year’s blackout was triggered by a utility’s failure to trim trees growing near power lines.

"The lesson of the blackout, boiled to its essence, is that electric power systems need good housekeeping or they fall down," he says.

Ontario has let both its generating stations and its transmission system grow old, Adams says.

"We haven’t updated our physical equipment," he says. "The average age of our transmission facilities is over 50 years in some parts of the province … We should concentrate on replacing our existing poles before a windstorm blows them over."

Overhanging the reliability of Ontario’s power system is the government’s promise to shut down the province’s coal-burning generators by 2007. The power lost will have to be replaced either by new generation or by reducing the need for power through conservation.

The government has set a target of a 5 per cent cut in overall demand by 2007 and has issued a request for proposals to add 2,500 megawatts of generating capacity or demand reduction — though not all of it will necessarily be online by 2007. It’s seeking another 300 megawatts of renewable generating capacity from sources such as wind or solar power (although the call for proposals triggered responses totalling 4,400 megawatts).

Duncan says that despite the promise to shut coal plants, the government "will never put consumers in jeopardy and will be totally satisfied that adequate alternatives are in place."

The IMO’s Goulding agrees that consumers won’t be deprived of any power in order to keep the shutdown promise.

"One thing I can say about the coal phase-out is we’re not going to let the lights go out," he says.

"If you cannot shut down all those coal-fired plants by 2007 and ensure that we have an adequate supply to maintain a reliable power system, some of that shutdown will have to be delayed until we do have an adequate supply."

Goulding says the IMO has the authority to order a plant to stay in service, but adds: "I don’t anticipate we’ll have to use that."

And some remain skeptical that the province can cope with cutting off the coal units on such a short time frame.

All indicators show that demand for electricity is likely to go up, says McBride of the mining association: "Ruling out coal as a means of producing electricity is not a prudent option."

Ontario’s aging nuclear reactors, which supply more than 40 per cent of the province’s power, are also a question mark. All will need to be replaced or refurbished by 2020. Duncan plans to draw up a plan by this fall outlining what percentage of Ontario’s power should come from nuclear, hydro, wind power and so on.

Nuclear advocates want the province to begin an aggressive nuclear building program, but Duncan says he’s not convinced of the urgency of the decision.

"I’m not certain that this government will have to make a decision on new nukes," he says. "The time pressure may not be there at this point."