Pair of Pickering reactors taken off line again

Posted on October 1, 2003 by Other News Sources

Rob Ferguson
Toronto Star
October 1, 2003

Official blames ‘minor issue’. Bruce units said almost ready to go

Less than a week after promising an idled nuclear reactor at Pickering would be producing full power by the end of September, Ontario Power Generation has been forced to take it out of service.

In a related development yesterday, officials at the Bruce Power nuclear plant on Lake Huron said their facility is ready to produce more electricity – four months behind schedule. They wouldn’t set a date.

Using the two units at the Bruce A complex is essential to keep heaters running in Ontario this winter if imports of hydro are to be avoided, the Independent Electricity Market Operator said in its latest outlook.

The future of the hydro supply has been a major issue in the election campaign, which ends with tomorrow’s vote.

Pickering’s idled Number 4 reactor, which got up to 70 per cent capacity at this time last week, went down on Saturday morning, according to reports filed with the IMO.

Within a couple of hours, the nearby Number 5 reactor at Pickering also went down.

OPG won’t say exactly what’s wrong, how long it will take to fix or when the troubled Number 4 reactor – which has received major renovations worth more than $1 billion since it was shut down in 1997 – will produce electricity again.

The repairs were supposed to be finished three years ago.

“We discovered there was a minor equipment issue we wanted to repair,” OPG spokesperson John Earl said yesterday.

“I can’t tell you how long it’s going to be because that’s commercially sensitive information.”

Earl said the problem at the Number 5 reactor is also a minor equipment issue. He would not elaborate, but said autumn is a good time for repairs between the peak summer air conditioning season and the winter heating season.

“The good news is the weather is gentle and electricity usage is lower,” said Tom Adams, executive director of Energy Probe, a watchdog group that keeps a close eye on Ontario’s hydro system.

“If the same thing happened in winter or summer, it would be much more serious.”

The two units at Pickering are capable of producing about 5 per cent of the province’s electricity needs at this time of year.

Adams said he wasn’t surprised by the shutdowns, especially at the retrofitted Number 4 reactor, because the units are three decades old and previous renovations have made their complicated engineering systems even more so.

“It’s reasonable to expect some teething problems,” he said, adding the problem at the Number 4 reactor is “probably some difficulty arising from the maintenance work.”

The Number 5 reactor is close to its natural retirement age unless it gets major renovations, which makes it unlikely to be a reliable producer of electricity, Adams said.

“When you’re squeezing the last few drops of juice from a lemon, it’s reasonable to expect firefly type of performance, meaning off and on.”

What annoys him more is the unwillingness of Ontario Power Generation to reveal in more detail what exactly the latest problems with the reactors are.

“A near-monopoly claiming it’s commercially sensitive information is really rich …. The condition of these reactors is treated as if it’s a state secret.”

OPG’s argument is that since it sells electricity into the province’s grid system, too much detail about its electricity supply situtation could tip competitors and skew the market.

Adams said it’s difficult to guess when the two reactors could be back in operation since restoring them to full power must be done in stages.

“It could be days or it could be months if it goes badly.”

At the Bruce plant near Kincardine, Bruce Power chief executive Duncan Hawthorne said the Bruce A Number 4 reactor is “actually making steam right now” after lengthy repairs and will start producing hydro “very, very shortly.”

But he added: “I’m not going to give you a specific date.”

The Bruce A Number 3 reactor is within a few weeks of making steam, which drives the turbines to create electricity, Hawthorne said.

“The track record of these reactors coming back from long outages is they have often had serious production problems …. I do not think we are out of the woods yet,” Adams said.

With files from Star wire services

Posted in Towards Shutdown | Leave a comment

Dim-bulb idea

Posted on September 24, 2003 by energyprbe

Tom Adams
National Post
September 24, 2003

To solve its energy problems, the Tory government in Ontario is trying a dim-bulb idea. It is ordering energy companies to pay customers to not use their products. Then, to compensate the companies, the government is allowing them to tack the associated costs onto customer bills, sometimes years later.

This dim-bulb idea isn’t new. In 1991, with such conservation-through-central planning schemes all the rage, Ontario Hydro signed on to them big time. Under what was then an NDP government, Ontario Hydro’s planners imagined that energy problems could be solved by stunts like distributing a pair of 52-watt light bulbs to households across the province. That “demand-side management” program, as the conservation schemes are known in the trade, alone cost $11-million. The budget for the overall conservation initiative ballooned to over $6-billion before it was scrapped and written off in 1993, when the utility started to come under competitive pressure.

Ten years later, this dismal business is back, this time under the auspices of Enbridge Gas Distribution, Ontario’s largest natural gas distributor. Enbridge shareholders last month scored an $8.1-million dividend bonus for claiming to have discouraged customers from using the company’s product in 2000 and 2001. Most of the payout, ordered by the Ontario Energy Board, was based on the company’s unaudited, self-reported results from its conservation programs in 2001.

This rich reward came notwithstanding the conclusions of an independent audit, approved by the Energy Board, of program results for 2000. The audit, the only one ever undertaken of Enbridge’s operations, discovered a long list of overstated savings. In fact, the audit found over half of the savings for some programs to be bogus.

The audit highlighted the difficulty – if not impossibility – of quantifying the actual savings and cost effectiveness for programs designed to prevent people from consuming. How can anyone know what consumers would have done in the absence of a particular program?

Of Enbridge’s $8.1-million payout, residential customers will bear 99% of the cost and industrial customers 1%, even though, according to Enbridge’s accounting, industrial customers will scoop 35% of the benefits. Oddly, this corporate giveaway comes with the blessing of the Consumers Association of Canada and a coalition including the union-backed Ontario Coalition Against Poverty – groups that appeared before the Ontario Energy Board in order to represent residential consumers. The bill for that 99% will start to hit households, small businesses, schools and other institutional users later this year.

While Enbridge wins praise from conservation advocates, a growing body of data that compares the performance of Enbridge customers with those in comparable utilities suggests that something could be going horribly wrong. The data suggests that Enbridge’s conservation programs may actually be increasing energy consumption.

A study conducted in 2000 by the respected Gas Research Institute found that between 1984 and 1999, households in a region that includes Ontario and five U.S. states cut their natural gas usage at a rate of 1.2% per year. Preliminary findings show that usage across this region has declined more quickly since. Meanwhile, between 1993 and 2002 – a period during which Enbridge actively promoted conservation – households served by Enbridge cut their usage by only 0.84%, a rate fully 30% slower.

Households served by Union Gas, Ontario’s second largest gas distributor, a utility often criticized by conservation advocates for dragging its feet on conservation programs, are also outperforming Enbridge households. They are cutting their consumption at a rate about 20% faster than their counterparts at Enbridge.

How conservation programs can backfire, and discourage conservation, is no mystery. When customers expect the government or a government-regulated utility to pay part of the costs of insulating their homes, or replacing their old appliances, they tend to put off their purchases until the program is in place. Enbridge customers are no different than customers in other jurisdictions that try to protect their pocketbooks. In their case, however, procrastination often pays.

The economic and environmental damage from natural gas conservation programs are relatively small. The big damage is slated to come in electricity.

Because the Eves government destroyed the electricity market by freezing electricity rates, Ontario’s electricity consumption has been rocketing upward and threatening to outrun our faltering supplies. The Eves’s government’s answer, like predecessor governments, is more conservation programs, this time to be implemented through Ontario’s electric distribution utilities.

The process is now in train. The consequences could be horrific. Unlike Ontario’s electricity sector, Ontario’s gas sector is financially and operationally sound, and mostly run on a businesslike, market-oriented basis. The gas sector can easily withstand conservation blunders. After all the shocks that the electricity sector has suffered – particularly the rate freeze and the end to a functioning market – it doesn’t enjoy this luxury. Conservation programs promise to speed us toward blackouts.

To solve its energy problems, the Tory government in Ontario is trying a dim-bulb idea. It is ordering energy companies to pay customers to not use their products. Then, to compensate the companies, the government is allowing them to tack the associated costs onto customer bills, sometimes years later.

This dim-bulb idea isn’t new. In 1991, with such conservation-through-central planning schemes all the rage, Ontario Hydro signed on to them big time. Under what was then an NDP government, Ontario Hydro’s planners imagined that energy problems could be solved by stunts like distributing a pair of 52-watt light bulbs to households across the province. That “demand-side management” program, as the conservation schemes are known in the trade, alone cost $11-million. The budget for the overall conservation initiative ballooned to over $6-billion before it was scrapped and written off in 1993, when the utility started to come under competitive pressure.

Ten years later, this dismal business is back, this time under the auspices of Enbridge Gas Distribution, Ontario’s largest natural gas distributor. Enbridge shareholders last month scored an $8.1-million dividend bonus for claiming to have discouraged customers from using the company’s product in 2000 and 2001. Most of the payout, ordered by the Ontario Energy Board, was based on the company’s unaudited, self-reported results from its conservation programs in 2001.

This rich reward came notwithstanding the conclusions of an independent audit, approved by the Energy Board, of program results for 2000. The audit, the only one ever undertaken of Enbridge’s operations, discovered a long list of overstated savings. In fact, the audit found over half of the savings for some programs to be bogus.

The audit highlighted the difficulty – if not impossibility – of quantifying the actual savings and cost effectiveness for programs designed to prevent people from consuming. How can anyone know what consumers would have done in the absence of a particular program?

Of Enbridge’s $8.1-million payout, residential customers will bear 99% of the cost and industrial customers 1%, even though, according to Enbridge’s accounting, industrial customers will scoop 35% of the benefits. Oddly, this corporate giveaway comes with the blessing of the Consumers Association of Canada and a coalition including the union-backed Ontario Coalition Against Poverty – groups that appeared before the Ontario Energy Board in order to represent residential consumers. The bill for that 99% will start to hit households, small businesses, schools and other institutional users later this year.

While Enbridge wins praise from conservation advocates, a growing body of data that compares the performance of Enbridge customers with those in comparable utilities suggests that something could be going horribly wrong. The data suggests that Enbridge’s conservation programs may actually be increasing energy consumption.

A study conducted in 2000 by the respected Gas Research Institute found that between 1984 and 1999, households in a region that includes Ontario and five U.S. states cut their natural gas usage at a rate of 1.2% per year. Preliminary findings show that usage across this region has declined more quickly since. Meanwhile, between 1993 and 2002 – a period during which Enbridge actively promoted conservation – households served by Enbridge cut their usage by only 0.84%, a rate fully 30% slower.

Households served by Union Gas, Ontario’s second largest gas distributor, a utility often criticized by conservation advocates for dragging its feet on conservation programs, are also outperforming Enbridge households. They are cutting their consumption at a rate about 20% faster than their counterparts at Enbridge.

How conservation programs can backfire, and discourage conservation, is no mystery. When customers expect the government or a government-regulated utility to pay part of the costs of insulating their homes, or replacing their old appliances, they tend to put off their purchases until the program is in place. Enbridge customers are no different than customers in other jurisdictions that try to protect their pocketbooks. In their case, however, procrastination often pays.

The economic and environmental damage from natural gas conservation programs are relatively small. The big damage is slated to come in electricity.

Because the Eves government destroyed the electricity market by freezing electricity rates, Ontario’s electricity consumption has been rocketing upward and threatening to outrun our faltering supplies. The Eves’s government’s answer, like predecessor governments, is more conservation programs, this time to be implemented through Ontario’s electric distribution utilities.

The process is now in train. The consequences could be horrific. Unlike Ontario’s electricity sector, Ontario’s gas sector is financially and operationally sound, and mostly run on a businesslike, market-oriented basis. The gas sector can easily withstand conservation blunders. After all the shocks that the electricity sector has suffered – particularly the rate freeze and the end to a functioning market – it doesn’t enjoy this luxury. Conservation programs promise to speed us toward blackouts.

 

Posted in Power Generation in Ontario | Leave a comment

Mothballed Pickering reactor finally restarted

Posted on September 24, 2003 by Other News Sources

Madhavi Acharya-Tom Yew
Toronto Star
September 24, 2003

 

An idled reactor at Pickering’s nuclear complex is now running at 70 per cent capacity and will produce full power by the end of the month, Ontario Power Generation Inc. says.

Unit four was producing power yesterday, generating about 360 megawatts for the province’s electricity grid, OPG spokesperson John Earl said.

“We are now just in the last stage of commissioning, or testing, bringing the unit back up to full power where it is providing reliable electricity to the Ontario grid,” Earl said.

“It’s over 70 per cent today on its way back to full power. We will declare the unit in-service this month.”

At full power, each of Pickering A units delivers 515 megawatts, enough to supply 2 per cent of the province’s electricity on a day of very high demand. The four reactors were taken out of service in 1997.

The restart is almost two years behind schedule and over-budget. OPG had planned to restart four idled reactors at Pickering by the end of 2000 at a total cost of $1.3 billion. Bringing the first online has cost more than $1.2 billion.

“I’m very uneasy about this return to service,” said Tom Adams, executive director of Energy Probe, a nuclear industry watchdog group.

“The track record has not been good. We should not expect this reactor to operate without glitches.”

The timing and cost of bringing the three shutdown reactors back into service has not been determined.

“We will take the lessons from that experience and apply that to preparing a schedule and costing for the next three units,” Earl said.

Meanwhile, an industry group representing companies such as General Motors Corp. and Falconbridge Ltd. says Ontario faces more blackouts unless the government sells more power plants and lets the market set prices.

Energy Minister John Baird has delayed plans for OPG, the government-owned utility, to reduce its output of the province’s power to about 35 per cent from 70 per cent by November, 2005. The government also backtracked on plans to let the market determine prices.

“We have received input over and over that having 70 per cent of Ontario’s power generation and all of its price-setting plants in the hands of one company was a key deterrent to new generation and investment,” David McFadden, chairman of the Stakeholders’ Alliance for Electricity and Customer Choice, said in Markham yesterday.

Baird capped prices for homeowners and small businesses at $43 a megawatt hour. It costs between $60 and $70 to produce a megawatt hour of electricity at a new gas-fired plant, and about $90 by wind turbine.

McFadden said the current cap should be raised over the next three years to more closely reflect the cost of producing electricity.

Posted in Nuclear Economics | Tagged | Leave a comment

Eves to delay hydro selloff indefinitely

Posted on September 11, 2003 by energyprbe

April Lindgren, with files from Lee Greenberg
Canwest News Service
September 11, 2003

Brechin: Premier Ernie Eves said yesterday that plans to eliminate Ontario Power Generation’s monopoly in the province’s electricity generating market are on hold until further notice.

The premier said the provincially owned power generating company won’t be forced to sell off more of its power plants until the province is “in a position where we can have a real retail market and we’re not there.

“We need excess (power generating) capacity I believe in the neighbourhood of 25 to 30 per cent,” Mr. Eves said during a campaign stop near Orillia. But with spare capacity currently limited to 10 to 15 per cent “any discussion about that (selling OPG assets) right now is quite frankly premature.”

Ontario’s governing Conservatives spent years planning the introduction of a competitive power generating market beginning in May 2002.

A key element was the decision to force OPG to reduce its share of the generating market to 35 per cent from more than 85 per cent by 2012.

While the government did manage to sell a few hydro electric plants and sign a long-term deal to lease the Bruce nuclear plant to a private firm, power prices skyrocketed after the electricity market formally opened to competition in May 2002.

Responding to consumers infuriated by their high power bills, the government abandoned most of its plans to liberalize the electricity market in November 2002 when it introduced an artificially low price freeze and touted a list of new potential power projects involving government investment.

With OPG still responsible for generating 70 per cent of Ontario’s power needs, Energy Minister John Baird last week contradicted Ontario Power Generating officials who a few days earlier said fossil fuel plants are still on the market including the Thunder Bay and Atikokan plants in northwestern Ontario, the Lakeview generating plant near Toronto and the Lennox plant near Napanee.

“Ernie Eves vetoed the Atikokan sale period – they had it for sale and Ernie Eves vetoed it because he didn’t want to sell a coal-fired plant because of environmental concerns,” Mr. Baird said during after an appearance in Ottawa with Mr. Eves.

“Thunder Bay is not for sale. The Lakeview generating plant we’re going to close in 2005 – it’s the oldest fossil fuel plant in our fleet and frankly we couldn’t give it away if we wanted to. And Lennox is not for sale.”

Tom Adams, executive director of the watchdog group Energy Probe, said the latest pronouncements from the premier and his energy minister take “backsliding to a new level” and will make it even more difficult for Ontario to attract electricity sector investors.

“What we have now is a commitment to extending OPG’s monopoly” and that’s a force the private sector will not be eager to tangle with in a competitive market, Mr. Adams said.

“What private generators were saying as they were leaving town a while ago was that they weren’t going to make any investment in Ontario until they had more clear information. Now the commitment to introducing a market for electricity has suffered another blow.”

 

Posted in Reforming Ontario's Local Electrical Distribution Sector | Leave a comment

Nuclear plants’ scrutiny privatized

Posted on September 9, 2003 by Other News Sources

Rob Ferguson
Toronto Star
September 9, 2003

The business of inspecting nuclear power plants in Ontario is being sold to the private sector, prompting concerns from industry critics about safety standards.

Ontario Power Generation – formerly the power-producing arm of Ontario Hydro – has reached an agreement to sell its inspection services division, a move that has been on the drawing board for months as a means to cut costs and boost profits.

The buyer is a three-member consortium of federally owned Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. (AECL), engineering company Babcock & Wilcox Canada Ltd. and NNC Holdings Ltd., according to an internal OPG document obtained by the Star. OPG officials could not be reached for comment.

The deal is expected to close in two or three months, pending approvals from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission and the OPG board of directors. It’s also contingent on reaching an agreement to perform inspections at the Bruce Power nuclear plant near Kincardine on Lake Huron.

While NNC Holdings is a respected nuclear inspector in Britain, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission is likely to have questions about the participation of AECL, said veteran industry watcher Tom Adams of Energy Probe.

OPG has blamed the crown corporation for delays in restarting Pickering A, with one internal report saying many of AECL’s 400 staff on the project “had no, or limited, current experience” in Candu technology. AECL has said the blame is unfair because it was doing engineering design work on the project in lockstep with OPG staff.

“OPG has expressed serious reservations about AECL,” said Adams, who added he is not opposed to privatization of nuclear inspection services in principle because it has worked well in Britain.

Babcock & Wilcox is a worldwide energy services company whose U.S. parent is operating under protection from creditors because of costly asbestos liability issues, but its Canadian unit is not part of the filing.

The company’s U.S. operations were once cited in a U.S. government report for inadequate training that contributed to the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979, Bloomberg News reported.

“The bottom line is the partners OPG has found … are a real mixed bag,” Adams said. “I am concerned about this.”

On the Ontario election campaign trail yesterday, the Liberal energy critic suggested standards could slide with the 300-member inspection service in the hands of private enterprise.

“Public safety inspectors and Ontario Power Generation are ultimately accountable to the government and the Legislature,” said Toronto MPP Michael Bryant (St. Paul’s).

“I think people need to have confidence that their safety inspections are public and not private. You could create some kind of independent nuclear inspectors from OPG, but you’ve got to keep it public.”

Privatizing inspections contributed to unsafe drinking water in Walkerton and unsafe meat products from Alymer Meat Packers, Bryant added.

A sale price for the division was not mentioned in the OPG document, but it is likely that whatever OPG earns on the sale will be offset by inspection fees it will pay in future.

Information meetings on the sale were held last Friday for inspection division staff, many of them highly trained technical experts, who were asked to “please continue to focus on the work at hand and work safely,” in an e-mail from Pierre Charlebois, nuclear chief operating officer and chief nuclear engineer at OPG.

“Your continued support and patience during the transition period is appreciated.”

With files from John Spears.

Posted in Nuclear Plant Security | Leave a comment

Why we should conserve

Posted on August 28, 2003 by energyprbe

Lawrence Solomon
National Post
August 28, 2003

Some Ontarians don’t understand why they should conserve electricity, as Ontario Premier Ernie Eves implores them to do. For these dunderheads, let me connect the dots.

1. Eves’s price freeze caused consumption to rise.

 

Last fall, following a period of high prices, Eves froze the rates that consumers paid for their power at 4.3¢ per kilowatt-hour, about half the rate for power that they had then been paying. Eves even maintained the price freeze during the recent blackout, when his government was buying electricity wholesale at prices well above the 4.3¢ at which it resold electricity. Because he artificially cheapened the cost of power, consumers naturally used too much of it.

Eves needed the price freeze as a short-term measure, to get him re-elected in what seemed an imminent election call. Unfortunately for him and his re-election team, the polls swung against Eves, forcing him to postpone the election. Unfortunately for Ontarians, the freeze also stayed in place.

To end the current power shortages, Eves needs only to let power prices rise and fall with demand. But ending the freeze would cause Eves to lose face and harm his re-election prospects. Since this is a non-starter, Ontarians only practical recourse – and one they should definitely take up if they want the lights to stay on – is voluntary conservation.

2. Without electricity shortages, power rates wouldn’t have soared, leading to the price freeze.

If Ontario had had plentiful supplies of power to draw on last fall, prices wouldn’t have soared. But Eves found himself with scant power supplies to call on because his nuclear plants weren’t working as planned – they rarely have. Eves was able to import some cheaper power from the United States – after deregulation south of the border, supplies there soared while prices plummeted – but not enough to make a big difference in Ontario. He and his predecessor, Mike Harris, had dithered in beefing up the needed interconnection with the U.S. grid, preventing plentiful supplies of U.S. power from coming to his rescue.

3. Had Eves not killed deregulation, generating plants would have been abundant, power would have been abundant, power prices would have behaved and Eves wouldn’t have needed his price freeze.

Mostly, Eves has had too few generating plants because the private sector abandoned Ontario. Just four years ago, while Eves was minister of finance, Ontario was teeming with independent private power entrepreneurs with plans for dozens of new, high-efficiency power plants. These plants – the same kind that led to a glut of power south of the border – can be built in as little as 12 to 18 months. Their construction awaited only the long-promised deregulation of the power sector. Yet Harris repeatedly gutted deregulation and then Eves effectively killed it. The independent power producers closed their offices and left Ontario. And Ontario was left without the entrepreneurs capable of quickly bringing reliable power to market.

4. Nuclear power, coupled with the expense of the rate freeze, will soon spur conservation.

Without private sector producers, Eves has fallen back on nuclear power, the technology of choice for many government-run monopolies. He is now spending billions in uneconomical repairs at the breakdown-prone Pickering A nuclear station. When or if that station will produce power again is unknown; that its power will be expensive, raising costs for all Ontarians, is not.

When Eves will rescind his rate freeze is also unknown, but it, too, is adding unnecessary costs to the power system. To date, those costs – about $800-million per year – are being hidden from view, in a new Crown corporation that Eves created to eliminate the legacy of the old Ontario Hydro’s public debt. When the nuclear and rate-freeze costs finally land on power customers, rates will soar and consumers will conserve.

In the end, Ontario didn’t privatize its power system and it didn’t deregulate prices. Instead, it created a chaotic make-up-the-rules-as-you-go government system far worse than any that Ontario had ever before seen.

All this Mr. Eves did in aid of remaining Premier. How well he succeeds in his re-election strategy will now depend on how well Ontarians connect the dots.

Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Urban Renaissance Institute, a division of Energy Probe Research Foundation. http://www.Urban-Renaissance.com, E-mail: LawrenceSolomon@nextcity.com.

Posted in Electricity, Energy Probe News | Leave a comment

Bright ideas

Posted on August 23, 2003 by energyprbe

Nora Underwood
The Globe and Mail
August 23, 2003

Aside from the drama, the inconvenience and the expense, the big blackout of 2003 has also provided a few opportunities – ones that extend far beyond being able to see the stars in downtown Toronto or having a rare evening of beery candlelit togetherness.

One is the chance to look at ways to permanently reduce the amount of energy used at home – without sacrificing style, of course.

“Why do you have to cool? asks Lyle Scott, manager of sustainable development for Minto Energy Management in Toronto. “You need to cool your house because somewhere you’re generating heat. If you boil a big pot of spaghetti, you’re generating a lot of heat. Same with lighting.”

Tom Adams really pays attention to light bulbs. The executive director of Energy Probe, a Toronto-based consumer and environmental research group, claims to have bought pretty much every kind of bulb on the market. The result: an enthusiasm for the growing variety and quality of energy-efficient lighting options, and a realistic attitude about what people should demand of themselves.

For the home, the good news is that the once low-quality and difficult-to-acquire compact fluorescent light bulbs have been redesigned in a wide range of shapes and sizes with improved colour rendition. They also use about 20 per cent of the power of conventional incandescent bulbs. A couple of caveats: Not every fixture will accommodate a CFL. Secondly, CFLs don’t tend to go to full power instantly, as incandescents do, but may take a couple of seconds to warm up. That’s not a bad thing, but it may be an annoyance.

And for consumers, the high ticket price – CFLs can cost about $7 or $8 each – can be a turn-off. In reality, though, CFLs save money. For one thing, their life expectancy starts at 2,000 hours, compared with about 500 hours for a conventional bulb. And over the course of the year, a conventional bulb will be replaced about four times, compared with once for a CFL. An incandescent costs about a quarter the amount but uses about 120 kilowatt-hours a year, versus about 26 kWh for a CFL. What makes most sense, Adams says, is to put CFLs in places where lights are on steadily, such as the kitchen, and where the bulbs are difficult to change.

Updating your appliances will also save you money and energy in the long run. “You can get a cheap and nasty stove for $300, but you get what you pay for,” says Peter Welch, an industrial designer with Hetherington Welch Design in Toronto. “Although there are basic energy requirements in manufacturing, better design makes a difference. For example, the casing around the stove’s door may fit a little better. In the low end, the door doesn’t have as much insulation and gets really hot. For an extra 100 or 130 bucks, you get an oven door that’s cooler to the touch. When you think about amortizing that cost over 15 years, is it worth it? I think so. I think it’s that kind of design feature that people have to be aware of.”

Of the total amount of energy a home’s appliances use, the stove accounts for 16 per cent; the fridge, 21 per cent; and the dryer, another 16 per cent. An astounding 36 per cent falls under “other” – TVs, VCRs, DVDs, computers – a category that has grown by more than 50 per cent over the past decade.

Over the past 20 years, the energy efficiency of refrigerators has improved dramatically. Any fridge bought now will be about 25 per cent more efficient than one bought in 1990. Typically, fridges with freezers on top use less energy than side-by-sides, and units with ice dispensers and other bells and whistles can be real hogs. According to Adams, the U.S. standard for appliance labelling has been a real boon, as fuel consumption is now marked on each new model.

If it isn’t the right time for a new fridge, then it’s worth vacuuming the heating coils at the back of the old one. “Once you look at those coils trying to do their work under this blanket of grey dust, you wonder how you can keep the ice cream cold at all,” Adams says.

In the laundry room, the washing machine is worth replacing for any number of reasons. While traditional top-loading machines are less expensive up-front, their other costs are much greater than those of the horizontal axis, or front-loading, washing machine. The basic design difference is the tumble action of the front-loader relative to the agitation action of the top-loader. The front-loader requires less soap and water, is quieter, has a powerful spin cycle so the clothes don’t need to be dried as long and, because there is no agitation, is easier on clothes.

The largest and most energy-efficient front-loader is made by LG Electronics and runs from about $1,500 to $2,000 for a 27-inch machine. It consumes only about 200 kWh a year. In the end, the front-loading machine may well replace the top-loader. “It’s an example of a device that has superior service relative to the traditional system,” Adams says, “an all-round improvement.” And for those feeling truly virtuous, there’s always the clothesline.

While some manufacturers have made subtle changes to old 13-litre toilets to convert them to six-litre models (one of the causes of double flushing), Japanese manufacturer Toto has been producing six-litre toilets for the last 30 years. The toilets provide about a 25-per-cent reduction in water use, and range in price from about $170 to $1,500.

One of the big things people complain about most during a summer blackout is a lack of air conditioning. Indeed, Ontario has gone from being a winter-peaking electricity jurisdiction to a summer-peaking one. “People have air conditioning in the garage,” Adam says. “It’s crazy.” Alternatives, he adds, include using window awnings, artful landscaping and floor fans (which use only a small amount of power) and “loosening the tie and not wearing the three-piece suit all summer.”

As well, properly insulating your house for the winter also means air conditioning will work more efficiently. Set back thermostats allow you to shut off air conditioning during the day and come back on in enough time to make it comfortable for your return in the evening. Many new room air conditioners also have electronic controls that shut off the cooling when the desired room temperature is reached.

Not to be discounted are ceiling fans – not the massive, scary-looking fans of old, but updated, stylish, sleek models that can be used with or without air conditioning. Artemide is the Canadian distributor for the Modern Fan Company, an American lighting and fan line. “They’re the latest trend right now,” Toronto store manager Rowley Ocampo says. “Other than their aesthetic quality, which is very clean and modern and sleek, these ones are not overly contrived to be modern. They’re broken out into their most basic components, which make them so beautiful.” And, he adds, “they’re silent, silent, silent.” Made of brushed aluminum and, in some models, hand-blown glass, the fans range in price from $550 to about $800 and give off a soothing ambient light.

If despite best efforts we’re plunged back into darkness, it pays to have a couple of nifty essentials on hand. Consider a solar-powered lantern (they recharge in the daylight to provide a few hours of light later), a wind-up flashlight (no scavenging for D batteries) and a self-powered radio. One, the Freeplay, is a 10-year-old British invention that requires about a minute of winding for an hour of play time. In addition, its AM/FM radio will play endlessly in direct sunlight and switch automatically to the wind-up setting when the lights go dim – so you won’t ever be left in the dark.

 

Posted in Electricity | Leave a comment

Power not fully restored, Ontario re-examines policy

Posted on August 22, 2003 by energyprbe

Bernard Simon
New York Times
August 22, 2003

With engineers still struggling today to restore full power to industries and households in Ontario, a spirited debate has erupted over the wisdom of recent energy policies in the province, Canada’s most populous.

The province’s premier, Ernie Eves, said today that the state of emergency that had been in effect since the blackout would be lifted this evening and that he expected power supplies to be back to normal by Monday. Since the blackout, the government has urged all power users to cut consumption by 50 percent or face temporary blackouts.

The delay in restoring full power is figuring in the debate over Ontario’s energy policies. In the last week, much of that debate has centered on a four-year price freeze imposed last fall, which, critics say, has led to increased consumption while discouraging new investment in generating and transmission capacity.

“The freeze is great for the consumer, but it’s doing nothing to encourage people to conserve energy,” said Rocco Sebastiano, an energy specialist at Osler Hoskin Harcourt, a Toronto law firm.

Mr. Eves said this week that he might reconsider the freeze. His ruling Progressive Conservative Party is running well behind the Liberals in public opinion polls and political observers expect Mr. Eves to call an election soon, possibly as early as October.

The premier’s second thoughts on electricity pricing are one example of how the blackout has affected debate on power regulation in Ontario, which accounts for about 40 percent of the Canadian economy.

Ontario and several other provinces form an integral part of the North American power grid. The Northeast region of the North American Electric Reliability Council covers New York State and New England, as well as Ontario, Quebec and the Maritime provinces.

But the regulatory system in Canada differs in several important respects from that in the United States. Under the Canadian Constitution, the provinces have jurisdiction over electricity, and each province has its own regulatory framework. In Ontario and Quebec, the provincial government is the sole shareholder in the main generation and transmission utilities. In Toronto and Ottawa, municipal corporations distribute power to homes and businesses.

Thomas Adams, executive director of Energy Probe, a nonprofit research group based in Toronto, said Ontario’s power sector had gone through three phases in the last four years. Before 1999, when it was dominated by Ontario Hydro, a single government-owned utility, “it was central planning with a plan,” Mr. Adams said. With the introduction of deregulation and competition in May 2002, “we were going to use the market mechanism to balance supply and demand.”

Geneviève Lavallée, an analyst at Dominion Bond Rating Service in Toronto, said the government’s backtracking on deregulation meant that “there’s no incentive to invest in transmission.”

At the time of the blackout, rates in the deregulated wholesale market were three times the fixed retail price of 4.3 cents a kilowatt-hour. The difference between wholesale and retail prices is made up by the province in the form of increased debt.

The extent of this subsidy has yet to be disclosed. Though the Ontario Electricity Financial Corporation, which holds the province’s power-related debt, is required by law to publish its accounts within 90 days of the end of its fiscal year, it has yet to produce a report for the most recent period, which ended March 31.

Paul Kahnert, a spokesman for the Ontario Electricity Coalition, a group that favors continued government control of power supplies, agreed that “power at cost” was the likely outcome of the debate. But “it has to be a regulated rate,” Mr. Kahnert said. “We don’t want a rate that’s subject to market manipulation.”

The relationship between Canadian and American utilities and regulators has also come under growing scrutiny since the blackout.

Mr. Adams expressed concern that efforts to change energy policies in the United States might take little account of Canadian interests, especially given the low profile of the Canadian government in electricity issues. “The legislative process in the United States doesn’t leave a lot of room for considerations that extend beyond Congressional districts,” he said. Setting up “an effective international reliability regulator will be a major challenge.”

At the time of the blackout, Ontario was using about 1,700 megawatts of power imported from the United States, out of total consumption of 25,000 megawatts. After reports emerged that the shutdown had its origins in Ohio, Mr. Eves said Ontario should become more self-reliant.

Two of the province’s nuclear power stations are now running well below capacity because of technical and safety concerns. Four units of the Pickering station, east of Toronto, with a combined output of 2,000 megawatts, have been out of service since 1997.

After last year’s backtracking on deregulation, Sithe Energies of New York stopped work on two gas-fired plants near Toronto with a combined capacity of 2,000 megawatts. According to Ms. Lavallée, the government “would have to change the environment here if they want to bring in private investment.”

Some opposition politicians have suggested that Ontario should look more to the neighboring provinces of Quebec and Manitoba than to the United States to plug future supply shortages.

But Mr. Sebastiano, the lawyer, said that Manitoba was too far away from Ontario’s urban centers to make such projects viable, and that it would take some time to expand transmission links from Quebec.

 

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Radiation Hormesis: Demonstrated, Deconstructed, Denied, Dismissed, and Some Implications for Public Policy

Posted on August 1, 2003 by energyprbe

Joel M. Kauffman
Journal of Scientic Exploration, Vol. 17, No. 3
August 1, 2003

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Radiation Hormesis: Demonstrated, deconstructed, denied, dismissed, and some implications for public policy

Posted on August 1, 2003 by energyprbe

(Aug. 1, 2003) The prevailing view of regulatory agencies and advisory groups is that all radiation is bad for health, and exposure to any form of it should be minimized. While high-dose radiation, regardless of source or intention, is harmful to health, evidence is presented that chronic doses up to 100 times those of normal ambient (including medical) exposures are beneficial, mainly due to lower cancer rates. Further evidence is presented that single, acute doses of up to 50 rad are beneficial, including in treatment of cancer and gangrene. Data are cited to show that below-ambient radiation levels are unhealthful, and that some radiation may be essential for many life-forms. Continue reading →

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