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Ontario power supplies up 7 per cent since blackout
Toronto: Almost a year after a massive blackout hit Ontario, the province’s electricity supply has seven per cent more capacity, which may make it better able to weather a similar blow.
Critics say changes the Liberal government has made don’t address the long-standing weaknesses in the province’s power grid, however.
The extra seven per cent of power capacity comes from the reactivation of three nuclear reactors that had been shut down for years, as well as a new gas-fired generating plant.
Testimony on Bill 100
Ontario energy plan: Conserve or pay
Ontario power consumers should prepare for price shocks starting next May to encourage a new "culture of conservation" in the wake of last year’s blackout, Premier Dalton McGuinty warns.
"We all need to find ways to reduce our consumption. Working together, we can ensure Ontario has an electricity supply that is reliable today and sustainable tomorrow," he said this week.
Energy Minister Dwight Duncan is developing an energy strategy, to be unveiled this fall, on how to boost electricity prices to encourage conservation.
Could it happen again?
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.
Ontario's electrical supply remains fragile
The Great Blackout of 2003 provided a wake-up call on the fragility of North America’s electricity supply.
For some, it also provided an opportunity to start a family.
Awi and Tanya Sinha call their son Gabriel their blackout baby.
He was conceived on Aug. 14, 2003 — the night the lights went out for about 50 million people in Ontario and numerous U.S. states.
"It was such a unique night and such a special night for us," Tanya said.
Ontario Power directors named
Ontario Power Generation has five new directors who share something the company’s previous board of directors largely lacked: Broad experience in the energy sector as producers or customers and, in one case, nuclear expertise.
The new directors were announced late yesterday, a day after Energy Minister Dwight Duncan had said the appointments had been made but wouldn’t name them.
They are:
Ontarians to pay $1B for hydro meters
Toronto: Ontario electricity users will pay more than $1 billion on their power bills over the next six years to cover the cost of smart meters that the government wants installed in homes and businesses provincewide.
The smart-meter initiative, which will make Ontario the first North American jurisdiction to record residential power consumption data on an hourly basis, will add $3 to $4 in ongoing capital and operating costs to each monthly bill when the system is fully installed in 2010.
Province criticized for OPG mandate
Ontario Power Generation hasn’t been given the guidance to plan its future and lacks adequate control over its finances, chairman Jake Epp has told the Toronto Board of Trade.
In a breakfast speech yesterday, Epp also alluded to problems at the big Nanticoke coal-burning generating station, which has been out of action more than one-third of the time this year.
Epp said OPG is still waiting for the provincial government, the company’s sole shareholder, to define its likely role in the years ahead. The province had promised to do that this fall.
The process works
Re: "Procedural pitfalls" by Gord Perks (Enviro, Dec. 16)
In criticizing the Ontario Energy Board for its passionless debate, Perks has overlooked the pattern of environmental success that arises from due process and meaningful energy prices.
Ontario should rethink coal opposition, power agency head says
Ontario needs to reconsider its resistance to coal as an energy source with the government pledging to phase out coal-fired power plants by 2007, the head of the new provincial power authority said.
"I don’t see that coal is necessarily ruled out providing it can be used in a more environmentally acceptable format than the present technology allows," Jan Carr, appointed to lead the Ontario Power Authority two weeks ago, said at a conference in Toronto.
Energy Probe 