What Have We Learned Three Years After The Big Blackout?
Posted August 14, 2006 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Don’t use too much power.
Try and conserve during the summer.
Be prepared for higher bills and even brownouts.
Sound like the long, hot summer of 2006? It is – but it’s also the equally long summer of 2003, the year parts of Ontario and North America were left in the dark for days after a blackout that began in Ohio.
Three years have passed since that moment at 4:09pm on August 14 th when the lights and everything else went out for more than 24 hours in parts of the G.T.A.
But despite pleas for conservation and warnings we simply don’t have enough hydro to meet our growing needs, the question remains – what, if anything, did we learn from the big plug pull of 2003? At least one expert suggests the answer is ‘not nearly enough’.
“We’re less likely to have a transmission-related blackout than we were three years ago,” advises Norm Rubin of Energy Probe. “But supply and demand in Ontario are still too tight.”
How power hungry are we? Ontario set a new record for hydro use on August 1 st. And another heatwave could bring it all back again.
“We need conservation,” argues Terry Young of the Independent Electricty System Operator, which monitors power in the province. “We need energy efficiency from everyone.”
The government wants to shut down its coal-powered but polluting generating plants but it can’t – right now there are no comparable replacements.
“Ontario is vulnerable,” Rubin argues. “There are many ways the grid can go down.”
But the Liberals insist that’s not exactly true. Since the blackout in 2003, more than half a billion dollars has been spent improving our system in Ontario. And new U.S. regulations have already made getting electricity from suppliers more reliable.
Hydro officials here admit we had to import power to make it through that incredible heatwave a few weeks ago. But they point out we not only survived using imported power, but we were never in any danger of a blackout.
And that’s something they couldn’t say in 2003.
CityNews Rewind: The 2003 Blackout
