At 6 p.m. Monday, the province was using 18,150 megawatts of electricity, a little more than two-thirds of the available power.
Normal demand for that same time period is usually between 22,000 and 24,000 megawatts -- evidence that people are following through on the province's plea for conservation.
The
Blackout of 2003. How very
official sounding.
Ominous.
Potent. In reality, it was a 6 hour
blown fuse. An unscheduled indoor camping trip. At my house it was
Easter, with
batteries replacing the
eggs as the object of the hunt. It wasn't a big
traumatic event, but it has given me a strange feeling. An
anxiety that I felt back in 2001.
Politics. The older I get, the more it seems like
politics, and
politicians, are the remnants of the group in high school that never figured out
popularity is not the
ultimate station in
life. You know (or maybe were) the kid who was so
desperate to have the newest fashion first, to throw the biggest
parties, to drive the fastest
car. The one that did everything right, but
stank of
desperation. The
middle of the pack type social climber. I think they all end up in
politics. The reason I mention my
erstwhile rulers is that they have a heavy hand in turning out the
lights.
A little background first, my
Ameri-centric friends:
Ontario, the province in the middle of the country over the
Great Lakes, is the most populous in Canada.
Toronto is the biggest city in Canada, and a major power user. 25 or so years ago,
Ontario and our neighbor,
Quebec, faced some long-term planning: What will be used to produce power our growing populations? Quebec opted for
hydroelectric power, and in the far
north of the province they entered negotiations with
Native bands. The talks bogged down, and it seemed that the plan was
ill advised. Ontario, seeking to avoid land settlement headaches, turned heavily
nuclear, increasing the small number of
CANDU reactors in the province. About 19 years ago, Ontario had a
New Democratic Party (
NDP)
Premier - think
governor. The NDP are very
socialist, and very
left leaning.
Unions vote NDP with a religious
fervor. The problem with the NDP was and is that they spend on
social programs like tomorrow will never come. They also slammed
corporate business with tax after tax. Lastly, they gave
environmentalists
carte blanche for delaying industrial construction. Hydro Generating station?
Not in my province cried the
hippy. So, the NDP runs up a
giant deficit and chases business out of the province. Enter the
Progressive Conservatives. The
PC party sweeps the next election and
Mike "the Knife" Harris, takes the
premiership. The PCs are the anti-NDP. They cut social programs drastically, kill the
deficit and start privatizing
public owned businesses. Popular at the beginning of their term, the deep cuts bleed out
education and
health care, along with support for the PCs. So, for 10 years or so, the
lumbering process of privatizing
Hydro Ontario lagged on. First it was split in two,
Ontario Power Generation producing the power and
Hydro One maintaining delivery to the public. During this time, no new
generating stations were built. Also during this time, existing
nuclear power stations at
Pickering,
Darlington and
Bruce Peninsula reached the critical repair age and slowly were brought off line for repairs. Back in
Quebec, they are sitting pretty, sending a
surplus down into the States from the hydroelectric dam complexes in
James Bay. The PC Government had brought
heavy industry back to southern Ontario, and the population and
construction boom in
Toronto built more and more power consumers into a
constricting market. The solution was to import power from the
United States, particularly New York, via
Niagara Falls, and Quebec, via
Cornwall in the
401 corridor.
Premier Harris stepped down during the last PC mandate, handing the reigns of the party to
Ernie Eves,
finance minister in the Harris cabinet. Poor Ernie has been having a
hard time. First, all the problems of the Harris administration have
come home to roost. Cuts to
health care likely contributed to the
SARS crisis in Toronto, which devastated tourism in the city. The power crisis loomed so large last summer that Ernie capped
electricity prices at an abnormally
low level, well below the actual generation costs, in response to the fine line the suppliers were treading. The demand had pushed prices up to
7 times the regular rate during the hot days of last summer. Things seemed grim as early as this winter, when
heating demands, traditionally lower than air conditioning demands, caused
brownouts in Toronto. The provincial demand outstripped the supply, and the import solution was wearing thin. There is only so much power
for sale out in the market.
Cut to this
summer. The media has been screaming about the
power problems in Toronto.
Brownouts grew common.
Government commercials promoting
conservation began airing,
thinly veiled as
environmental activism, something the
corporate friendly PCs have had little interest in in the past.
August brings hot humid weather to the
Golden Horseshoe and external suppliers choke on the
order. The likely reason the blackout cascaded across the province was that
transmission lines were
wide open across the
US-Canada border. No islands means no protection. The second the Ohio generator dropped
off the grid, the demand from
New York City,
Albany,
Boston,
Toronto,
Windsor,
Detroit and
Ottawa jumped to the next station.
Pop! Next.
Pop!
Cascade blackout.
What makes me
sick is that this is all
out of our hands and firmly in the
realm of politics. New
generation needs to be constructed in
Ontario. New generation and transmission needs to be constructed in the
northeastern States according to
President Bush. What can the
common voting person do about it?
Nothing substantial until maybe the next
election. Will the
problem go away? No, but it will be
hoisted onto our shoulders. Using electricity in my own home has become a
craps game. Could I be the one that blows the
province out for another week? I don't want that
hanging over my head every time I turn on the
kitchen light. I figure
Ernie has lost himself a premiership, but its
little comfort to me as the
ice-cream pools around my ankles.