Teri Fikowski, Global Lethbridge : Thursday, July 12, 2012 5:04 PM

Southern Alberta residents are demanding answers about a proposed transmission line through the province.

The Goose Lake to Etzikom Coulee transmission project is a potential transmission line to connect sub-stations near Pincher Creek and Stirling.

Representatives from AltaLink and Alberta Electric System Operator took questions from those concerned at a town hall meeting in Twin Butte Wednesday night, but the project doesn’t seem to sit well with area residents.

Landowners from the town, Pincher Creek, and as far away as Lethbridge asked representatives questions about the project and their concerns surrounding it.

Chair of the sub-committee for the Chinook Area Land Users Association, Anne Stevick tells GlobalNews the transmission lines will affect the entire province.

“It will affect all of us, businesses wise, residence wise and our power bills. If we see businesses leaving Alberta because of the increase to their electricity it’s going to hurt all of Alberta,” she adds.

The intention behind the meeting was to establish the need for the approximate 200 kilometer transmission lines.

Jason Doering with AESO says he can’t stress enough the importance of the project for Alberta’s economic development.

“The project was staged in a manner that allows us to develop the pieces as wind interests shows up in Alberta. Based on the continued wind interest that we see the project is still needed,” he says.

Residents at the meeting weren’t convinced and wore red clothing to represent “stop.”

Pia Blum is a Drywood landowner and is worried about how the project will impact the landscape.

“It devalues our land and this is the most beautiful land in all of Alberta. I cannot understand why they put it in this corridor where the prairies meet the mountains and you can’t find that anywhere else,” she says.

Meanwhile, Tim Romanow owns land east of Cardston and is concerned about soaring power bills.

“There’s potential for some extremely high cost overruns that are going to cost everybody in the province. Not just the landowners directly impacted but every Albertan and people need to hear that message and understand the potential impact this project has on our area,” he adds.

Mark Johns with AltaLink asked residents to keep in mind a firm route hasn’t been established.

He says additional options are still being explored and they’re taking all feedback into consideration.

“We try to find the route with the least impact. We look at the various aspects as we do that. We look at impact to residents, visual impacts, agricultural impacts, environmental impacts, costs and technical aspects,” he adds.

AltaLink will hold another open house at Twin Butte’s town hall July 18.

© Global News. A division of Shaw Media Inc., 2012.

By Paula Simons, edmontonjournal.com July 11, 2012

EDMONTON – Never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence.

It’s an adage I keep in mind, when conspiracy theories beckon.

It’s easy to understand why many politicians, consumer advocates, and other people are suspicious about Monday’s extraordinary rolling blackouts, triggered when five major power plants went off-line during the heat wave, sending power prices skyrocketing to the maximum ceiling price, $1,000 per megawatt-hour. That several plants would shut down at a time of peak demand does seem fishy, especially when AESO, the Alberta Electrical System Operator, refuses to reveal why they failed. Gaming the system isn’t new: six months ago, TransAlta, one of the province’s biggest generators, was fined $370,000 for creating an artificial energy shortage and inflating electricity prices, for which TransAlta benefited to the tune of $5.5 million.

But Monday’s mess had less to do with collusion than with structural weaknesses in our electrical system.

Records provided Wednesday by AESO and Capital Power, show power prices began to sharply climb because of record temperatures and record power use, well before three of the power plants in question broke down.

The price was already at $597.53 MWh at noon before Atco’s 385 MW Battle River 5 generator failed just after 1 p.m.

The price hit $999.99 before Capital Power’s 400 MW Genesee 2 plant went down.

Far from profiteering, it looks as if power producers actually blew an opportunity to cash in on our insatiable demand for air conditioning.

Who were the real conspirators driving up prices? Perhaps we were.

Martin Kennedy, Capital Power’s vice-president of external relations, says their plant failed because of a malfunctioning heat sensor, which threw the plant into automatic shutdown.

“We had absolutely no financial incentive for that unit to go down. The maximum price had already been reached.”

On top of that, he says, Capital Power must now pay contractual penalties to its clients for failing to produce the power promised to them.

Richard Dixon, executive director of the Centre for Applied Business Research in Energy and the Environment at the University of Alberta, also laughs off talk of conspiracy, especially because Alberta’s electricity market isn’t a regulated monopoly, but a competitive enterprise.

“The way to look at it from an economist’s point of view is to see if they were capturing maximum profit. You’re not benefiting from the fact you went off-line. Who’s going to make money? The guy down the road. Economically, that doesn’t make sense.”

Dixon’s research into Monday’s blackouts suggests at least three plants failed because of problems with their heat sensors, which reacted to the hot weather.

Wind power also failed dramatically. At peak, wind adds 939 MW to our electrical supply Monday, the air was so calm, there were 6 MW of wind power available.

Just because there was no nefarious scheme to drive up prices doesn’t mean there aren’t problems. When electricity was a regulated utility, companies could overbuild to create excess generation capacity to be fired up in the event of a crisis. They were guaranteed a rate of return, and in exchange, promised supply stability.

Now, in a free market system, where private companies assume all risk, there’s no incentive to build anything that isn’t practically profitable. That makes the system less elastic and could lead us into occasional darkness.

According to an AESO report published this May, by 2013 Alberta’s electric system daily supply cushion — its ability to meet peak demand — won’t be adequate to handle power usage spikes. For the period between May 1, 2012 to April 30, 2014, the supply shortfall was estimated to be 686 MWh. Some pressure will be reduced when Enmax’s major new 800 MW gas power plant opens in 2015. Until then, however, there may be more days when Alberta’s system strains to meet demand.

Dixon thinks it’s time we stopped gorging on electricity and started thinking about conservation.

“We haven’t had a serious demand-side discussion in this province for years. If you want your air conditioning on, maybe you have to turn your lights off.”

Monday, it was 33 C, not 43 C; still, our electricity use spiked at 9885 MW. That’s 333 MW more than we used at our peak last July — almost a power plant’s worth of juice.

If our free market model, growing reliance on wind, and growing energy appetite mean we won’t have enough electricity on demand to cushion us through a supply crisis, maybe it’s time to have a serious conversation about just how much how much we’re demanding.

[email protected]

Twitter.com/Paulatics

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To read Paula’s blog, go to edmontonjournal.com/Paulatics

Blackout timeline

8 a.m. — Electrical system demand in Alberta is 8589 MW. The price per $14.29 per megawatt hour. The temperature is 24 degrees Celsius

8:34 a.m. — ATCO Power’s coal-fired Battle River Plant 5, with a capacity of 385 MW, goes off-line.

10 a.m. — The temperature climbs to 28 degrees C. Electricity use climbs to 9355 MW. The price rises to $125.64 per MWh.

11 a.m. — Electricity use hits 9589 MW, a new summertime record for Alberta. The price hits $502.59.

1 p.m. — Electricity use climbs to 9842 MW. The price hits $899.52.

1:06 p.m. — TransAlta’s Keephills 1 power plant, with 406 MW generation capacity goes off-line.

1:08 p.m. — The price of electricity hits $999.99 per MWh

1:37 p.m.  — AESO, the Alberta Electrical Systems Operator, issues a Level 1 alert.

2 p.m. — The temperature climbs to 32 degrees C. Electricity use climbs to 9885 MW, a record. The price stays at $999.99 per MWh

2:06 p.m. — AESO declares a Level 2 electricity alert.

2:07 p.m. — A heat sensor malfunctions at Capital Power’s Genesee 2 plant, with a capacity of 400 MW.

2:10 p.m. — AESO declares a Level 3 alert, orders major distributors including Enmax and Epcor, to shed electricity load. The price hits the maximum $1000.00 MWh

2:58 p.m. — TransAlta’s 362 megawatt Sundance 3 generator, which had been off-line for servicing since Friday, comes back into service.

3 p.m. — The temperature hits 32 degrees. Thanks to rolling blackouts, electricity use drops slightly to 9654 MW. Price remains at $1000 per MWh

3:46 p.m. — ATCO Power’s 385 MW Joffre natural gas power plant goes off-line.

4 p.m. — The temperature is 33 degrees C. Electricity use declines to 9573 MW. Price remains at $1000.

5 p.m. — AESO reduces alert status to level two. Power use rises to 9606 MW. The price stays at $1000.

5:13 p.m. — ATCO’s Joffre plant comes back on line.

5:14 p.m. — Capital Power’s Genesee 2 back on line

5:41 p.m. — AESO reduces power alert status to level 1

11 p.m. — The price of electricity falls sharply to $19.74 MWh. Demand levels to 8936 MW.

© Copyright (c) The Edmonton Journal

By Don Butler, Postmedia News July 10, 2012

OTTAWA — Wind power opponents were celebrating Tuesday after Health Canada announced it will conduct peer-reviewed research, in collaboration with Statistics Canada, into the effect of wind turbine noise on human health.

Jane Wilson, president of the anti-wind group Wind Concerns Ontario, learned of the study in a phone call Tuesday morning from Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s office.

“Wow, I said, is it Christmas? It’s July!” she said in an interview. “This is exactly what we’ve been saying all along, that there really wasn’t the science there to base policy on.”

Wilson is confident the study will confirm the link between wind turbines and human health. “The symptoms that are being reported by people in Ontario are the same as those being reported around the world,” she said. “So there really is something there.”

But the wind industry had a much different response.

“We believe that the balance of scientific evidence clearly shows that wind turbines don’t have an impact on human health,” said Robert Hornung, president of the Canadian Wind Energy Association. “That’s been supported by numerous reviews of the scientific literature.”

While Hornung didn’t want to prejudge the results of Health Canada’s study, he noted that research in this area is ongoing. “As that research has been added to the knowledge base, it hasn’t, to this point, led to any fundamental change in the conclusion.”

Health Canada’s announcement immediately led to calls for a moratorium on new wind power developments pending the completion of the study, expected in 2014.

“It is unacceptable for the Ontario government to continue to approve projects when government staff refuse to acknowledge the problem, are not able to measure the noise, and cannot ensure compliance with their own regulations,” Wilson said.

Nepean-Carleton MP Pierre Poilievre issued an open letter to Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, calling for a moratorium on the Marlborough Wind Farm, a proposed 10-turbine development near North Gower, Ont., about 40 kilometres south of Ottawa.

The project, which has stirred strong local opposition, is on hold awaiting release of Ontario’s revised Feed-in Tariff program, expected later this summer.

The question of whether wind turbines harm the health of those who live near them has been highly contentious. Opponents say low-frequency sound emitted by the turbines makes some people dizzy, causes headaches, and disrupts sleep.

“Some people are unable to work,” said Wilson, who lives in North Gower. “Over time, that gets worse, and they’re not able to stay in their homes.”

In Ontario alone, Poilievre said, more than 130 people — living an average of 675 metres from a wind turbine — have reported adverse health effects due to turbine noise.

Warren Mabee, director of Queen’s University’s Institute for Energy and Environmental Policy, said the consensus worldwide is that “there may be people who are sensitive to the noise, but it’s not consistent across the whole population.

“There’s also an emerging consensus that there’s a pretty strong mental component to this,” he added. “There’s people that have homes that are very close to some of these projects, and it is stressful for them. There may be people that are suffering, and we shouldn’t dismiss those claims.”

Mabee said it was responsible of the federal government to commission the study. “It’s always good to have more information.”

But, he added, “I don’t expect any big surprises in this report, because it’s been very, very difficult in the past to link conclusively cause and effect, to show that the turbines themselves are solely responsible for any kind of health impacts people are experiencing.”

Wind power projects have been proliferating in recent years, spurred by generous government subsidies. As of May 2012, Canada’s installed capacity was 5.4 gigawatts, a nearly seven-fold increase since 2005.

Wind power now supplies 2.3 per cent of Canada’s electricity demands, and the industry hopes to ramp that up to 20 per cent by 2025.

Unlike some past studies, which have simply reviewed other literature, Health Canada’s will be a field study, conducted at 2,000 dwellings ranging from 500 metres to more than five kilometres from wind power plants with eight to 12 turbines.

It will involve interviews with residents, automated blood pressure measurement, sleep evaluations and measurement of cortisol levels, a marker for stress. All the data will be correlated with calculations of wind turbine noise so any potential relationship to health symptoms can be reliably determined.

While Hornung wouldn’t speculate on the impact of a negative finding on Canada’s burgeoning wind power industry, he said his association will review the study’s proposed methodology and monitor the results.

Mabee said Ontario’s wind power expansion has been very much led by industry, with projects going wherever wind developers can line up willing landowners with access to hydro lines.

“Often that is where there’s a lot of people living,” he said. “And that’s a bit of an issue. Maybe we need to think about that more in the future. Is there a way that we can cluster them away from large populations?”

The decision to proceed with the study follows the collapse of efforts by a working group from all levels of government to draft national guidelines to mitigate the potential health impacts of turbines on nearby residents. That project was cancelled earlier this year when working group participants were unable to reach a consensus.

[email protected]

© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

Original source article: Health Canada to probe possible health effects of wind turbines

By Judith Lavoie, Times Colonist July 11, 2012 6:37 AM

A damning report on Enbridge Inc.’s inept handling of the 2010 crude oil spill in Michigan should kill the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline, NDP leader Thomas Mulcair said Tuesday in Victoria.

“Northern Gateway should be stopped and the plug should be pulled on it,” said Mulcair, after meeting with local community groups and business leaders.

“Today’s conclusive report by the Americans, I think, should be the final nail in that coffin.”

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said Tuesday that Enbridge managed the massive Michigan spill like the “Keystone Kops.”

The company did not act for 17 hours after receiving the initial alarm about the pipeline rupture and failed to take action even though it had known since 2004 that the pipeline suffered from corrosion, the board found.

The Northern Gateway pipeline, which is facing strong opposition from First Nations and many British Columbians, would run from Alberta’s oil sands to Kitimat, where bitumen would be loaded on to supertankers and shipped to Asian markets.

“The concerns being expressed in B.C., now have to be listened to by everyone,” Mulcair said.

“I am firmly opposed to Northern Gateway, as is the NDP. It makes no ecological or economic sense to be taking those huge risks with that very delicate coastline.”

The New Democrat leader was in Victoria at the University of Victoria for a fundraiser to pay off expenses from his leadership campaign.

He previously aroused the ire of Albertans by saying the oilsands are driving up the dollar and hurting the manufacturing sectors of central Canada and calling for greener development and massive cleanup efforts.

On Tuesday, Mulcair also lashed out at the Conservative government’s dismantling of environmental protections and said actions such as gutting the Fisheries Act are turning many Canadians to the NDP.

“Canadians want us to protect the environment. They believe in basic principles like polluter-pay,” he said.

Changes to the Fisheries Act would have devastating effects on B.C.’s lakes, as the new rules require the presence of a commercial fishery before waters are protected, Mulcair said.

“It is not enough to show a deleterious substance has been put into fish habitat, now you have to be able to prove that, not only were the fish negatively affected, but they’re actually going to die,” he said.

Polls favourable to the NDP show that Canadians want an alternative to the government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the NDP is providing it, Mulcair said.

Mulcair shrugged off a Conservative attack ad campaign and said, although the NDP is upbeat and wants to take the high road, the party will respond in a similar vein if that is what it takes to show Canadians what is wrong with the Conservative government.

“I learned my politics in a very tough neighbourhood in Quebec City, and I am kind of used to the rough and tumble,” he said.

New NDP ads, posted on the party’s website, go after Harper’s economic record and feature ominous drumbeats and unflattering black and white photos.

The ads were emailed to party supporters Tuesday and posted on the NDP website, but it is not yet clear whether the party will pay to broadcast them.

[email protected]

— With a file from the Canadian Press

Read more stores from the Times Colonist.

© Copyright (c) The Victoria Times Colonist

By Keith Gerein and Sheila Pratt, edmontonjournal.com July 10, 2012

EDMONTON – Alberta’s electric system watchdog is planning a full review of Monday’s power shortage in which the unexpected failure of six generating stations on one of the hottest days of the year led to rotating blackouts across much of the province.

Harry Chandler, head of Alberta’s Market System Administrator, said Tuesday his probe will try to “pick apart the day,” by looking into the legitimacy of the plant shutdowns and whether all market rules were followed. Critics have said the failure of so many major generators on a day of record electricity demand is suspicious, raising the question of whether market manipulation was at play to drive up the price of power.

“Those are legitimate questions, people should be asking those questions and it’s up to us to respond to that,” Chandler said. “Like everybody else, we noticed this one. We’re looking at it, but I wouldn’t take it any further than that at this point.”

Consumer groups are calling for new rules to help prevent electricity brownouts.

Under the current system, power companies must signal a day ahead the amount of energy they will supply and at what price. But neither the price nor the amount of power is binding.

Under a binding, day-ahead market mechanism, generators would pay a penalty if they did not meet their supply offer or they would have to buy power to meet their pledge, said Jim Wachowich, lawyer for the Alberta Consumers’ Association.

The potential of paying a penalty would reduce the risk of sudden power shortages like the one that occurred Monday that briefly sent prices soaring to the maximum rate of $1,000 per kilowatt hour.

“In this market, what is the penalty to the generator who does not show up?” Wachowich asked.

“In Alberta’s market, there is incentive for generators to pull out and the price goes up, but if they had to pay a penalty, they would be less likely to pull out.”

While the electricity industry has said the shutdowns were the result of an unfortunate series of mechanical mishaps, some critics have asked how the public can know for sure.

Last December, Calgary-based TransAlta Corp. was fined $370,000 for manipulating the market in November 2010. TransAlta created an artificial power shortage, causing consumers to pay an extra $5. 5 million on their bills.

Sheldon Fulton, formerly executive director of the Industrial Power Consumers Association, said the big generators are resistant to a binding day-ahead market because it shifts some risk to them and prevents them from pushing up the price.

“It’s similar to a situation if you order a fridge from Costco at one price and next day, when it is delivered, you are told the price just went up. What kind of market is that?”

Doug Simpson, director of market operations for the Alberta Electric System Operator, said a binding, day-ahead market has been contemplated twice, but the provincial government preferred the current setup. He said while the current system does not hold power companies to prearranged prices and volumes, such companies are required to at all times offer all the energy that’s available from their plants.

Grid operator says all but one plant back in service

By Dan Healing, Calgary Herald July 10, 2012

CALGARY — With all but one plant back pumping electricity onto the grid Tuesday morning, the director of market operations for the Alberta Electric System Operator said chances are “pretty slim” Monday’s power outages will be repeated today.

But he couldn’t rule it out.

“Today we’re in much better shape, we have an additional 1,200 megawatts,” Doug Simpson told the Herald in a morning interview.

“That said, if we have a number of forced outages again, then I guess we could end up in that condition again.”

Lights went out all over Alberta on Monday as utility companies were ordered by the AESO to implement rolling blackouts because demand was exceeding electricity supply.

One coal-fired plant, TransAlta Utilities’ 362-megawatt Sundance 3, went down on Friday but came back on as scheduled at about 3 p.m. Monday.

But by then, four other plants had gone dark and Alberta’s backup power source, the wind generators centred mainly in southern Alberta, were becalmed, producing as little as six MW.

Simpson said Alberta moved to import power from B.C., taking 550 MW, the maximum the import line will hold, and picked up another 50 MW from Saskatchewan, the maximum that province could spare.

Meanwhile, the demand side was headed for the highest summer level on record, spiking at 9,885 MW, 300 MW higher than the previous record of 9,552 set last summer.

Simpson said wind power grew as the afternoon went on, peaking at 180 MW and helping restore the system to balance.

Paul Wright, vice-president of finance for ATCO Power, said Tuesday morning that the 385-MW Battle River 5 coal-fired unit, which went off-line Monday morning, remains dark and will likely stay that way until Thursday until mechanical issues are repaired.

Spot electricity prices spiked at the maximum $1,000 per megawatt-hour on Monday afternoon after trading as low as $11 earlier in the day.

Wright conceded that his company does see a financial gain from those prices, as would all of the generators, but he said speculation by critics that generators worked in concert is not true.

“Our situation is that it was an issue at the plant, it wasn’t anything other than that,” he said. “I can’t comment on other people’s speculation.”

In quick succession in early afternoon Monday, plant outages were experienced at TransAlta’s 406-MW Keephills 1, Capital Power’s 400-MW Genesee 2 and ATCO Power’s 385-MW Joffre CT201.

Capital Power said its plant had an instrument malfunction and automatically shut down, but was restarted quickly and back fully on line by 5:15 p.m.

At Keephills 1, a generator cooling temperature sensor was aggravated by the daytime heat and automatically shut down the unit, according to TransAlta.

Simpson said one other plant, a gas-fired generator at Balzac, also went out late Monday but that happened after the crisis was over and it was a brief outage.

Wednesday, 11 July 2012 02:01 May, Katie

Katie May
LETHBRIDGE HERALD
[email protected]
The City of Lethbridge followed protocol when it activated rotating blackouts across the city during a province-wide heat wave power shortage Monday afternoon. Power was out for a total of three hours in various areas of the city, mainly in westside residential neighbourhoods, with each outage lasting about 30 minutes.
Randy Doyle, the City of Lethbridge’s Electric Operations Distribution Manager, said city employees were following the rules when they chose to cut power first to westside residential neighbourhoods in favour of keeping the lights on at southside big-box stores and industrial properties.
“We go to the book and start following the plan as far as we’ve set it out in advance, and hopefully that works as effectively as it can be,” he said.
Shutting down electricity in more traffic-heavy areas of the city would’ve caused more chaos, Doyle said.
“We can’t be overly selective so if we kill the power to that whole section, we kill all the traffic lights as well, so traffic is severely impacted, the police are severely impacted. It just cascades down,” he said.
Still, the city does everything in its power to keep electricity up and running for big businesses and large-scale community events, Doyle said.
“Unless it was a province-wide catastrophic crash or a weather emergency that would, say, disable the whole of Lethbridge, we would never voluntarily shut down an event like that. We would look for other options in the residential neighbourhoods.”
On Monday, the province asked larger cities, including Edmonton, Calgary and Lethbridge, to reduce their electricity usage after six different power plants went down, putting pressure on the provincial grid.
The Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO) – the body that oversees the provincial grid – reported four coal power generation plants and two gas plants went down Monday, causing the high demand on electricity. But a spokesperson for the AESO wouldn’t say what caused six generators to shut down in one day, only that the outages were “all forced, all unplanned and all unpredictable, unforeseeable.”
“We’re susceptible to these unit trips and they don’t give us any warning when a unit trips off. It goes off in very short order and it can be at full output one minute and completely offline the next, and we have to deal with that. That’s what happened yesterday. There was very little time to give any notice to anyone,” said Doug Simpson, director of market operations for AESO.
The agency is working on an internal review of what went wrong, but Simpson said it’s unlikely the outcome of the review will be made public. Meanwhile, the AESO is still urging Albertans to curtail unnecessary electricity use, saying another blackout is possible.
“It’s always a risk. We have high temperatures continuing this week that will increase the demand that Alberta will experience and if we end up with these unpredictable forced outages again, we could be in the same situation. That said, it doesn’t happen very often,” Simpson said.
“It’s very unusual that that many units would be forced offline in the same day.”
The demand for electricity in Alberta reached a record-breaking peak of 9,885 megawatts at 2 p.m. Monday, up from last July’s record high of 9,552 megawatts, according to AESO.
The last time Alberta saw forced power outages was in 2006, when lightning strikes tripped out some generators and the provincial grid couldn’t handle the demand.
The power outages have added fuel to the fire of provincial politics, with one NDP MLA questioning Alberta’s deregulated electricity system.
In a news release issued Tuesday, Edmonton-Calder MLA David Eggen called for an investigation into the forced outages and for a return to a regulated system.
“We must have a report on why those four plants were down yesterday, or on whether there was any illegal manipulation of the system to jack up prices, or on why power companies can build a plant anywhere and we just have to build transmission to work with those plants,” he said in the news release. “But we don’t need a report on whether this deregulation nightmare is working for Albertans, either in terms of reliability or in terms of affordability.”

Tuesday, 10 July 2012 02:00 May, Katie

Katie May
LETHBRIDGE HERALD
[email protected]
Some Lethbridge residents were left in the dark Monday afternoon as a heat wave across the province put pressure on Alberta’s electricity grid, forcing blackouts in several communities.
Lethbridge, along with other cities including Calgary and Edmonton, had to power down amid humidity warnings and 30-degree weather because the province’s electrical system was in danger of overloading. The Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO) – the body that looks after the provincial grid – pleaded with Albertans to cut their electricity consumption for fear of a widespread blackout, blaming increased use of air conditioners and irrigation equipment.
“We’ve identified that there is a supply shortfall and so we’ve notified all of the transmission facility owners and it’s up to them to decide what they need to do to ease the load,” said AESO spokesperson Erin Powell.
Around 2:30 p.m. Monday, the AESO told the City of Lethbridge it needed to immediately shut down four megawatts of electricity – enough to power 4,000 homes. For the next three hours, the city saw rotating power outages, mainly in westside residential neighbourhoods such as Paradise Canyon and RiverStone that don’t have traffic lights. Lethbridge College and some southside homes were also affected by the outages, which lasted about 30 minutes each.
Randy Doyle, the city’s electric operations distribution manager, had to figure out how to comply with the provincial order without disrupting too much of the city’s 150-megawatt peak power usage.
“We try to spread the pain, so to speak. We’re somewhat limited in our ability to do that because we try not to drop big commercial customers. If we drop the power at a bank, say, that’s a real problem,” said Doyle. “We try to stay with residential as much as we can, but ultimately if the province says we have to shut stuff off, we just have to start opening circuit breakers and dropping everyone who’s attached to that line.”
Such a widespread over-usage outage is rare in the Lethbridge area, Doyle said.
“I don’t think this has happened in probably a decade,” he said. “Today the system is definitely under stress.”
Power companies serving central and southern Alberta also shut down electricity to several communities Monday afternoon, though they had no estimation of how many customers were affected.
FortisAlberta said it pulled the plug on customers throughout its service area, including rural areas near Medicine Hat and Taber.
AltaLink, which supplies power to most of southern and central Alberta, had powered down at least 14 substations, most serving oilfield operations in those areas of the province to try to lessen the burden on residential customers, according to AltaLink spokesperson Scott Schreiner, who said that in addition to the sweltering heat, a few generators went offline, meaning the province didn’t have enough power supply to meet the demand.
“It’s pretty rare for something like this to happen, but fortunately the Alberta Electric System Operator has the contingency plans in place that allow us to do the systematic removal of load from the system so that it prevents a larger scale outage from happening,” he said.

July 10, 2012

 Edmonton… NDP Environment critic Rachel Notley said Alberta’s Conservatives are selling out Albertans if they don’t take a lesson from the National Transportation Safety Board’s report today.  Notley renewed her called for an independent public review of regulatory oversight of Alberta’s massive pipeline system.

Notley referenced the observation made by the NTSB Chairperson Deborah Hersman, where Hersman said “delegating too much authority to the regulated to assess their own system risks and correct them is tantamount to the fox guarding the henhouse.”

“Conservative environmental protection has always been weak,” Notley said.  “It’s always been more about press releases and polished PR campaigns than about actually getting boots on the ground, and regulations on the books.  But when we see repeated failures on the part of pipeline companies, both the environment and industry sustainability are put at risk.”

Alberta’s pipeline system rests almost entirely on industry self-regulation.  Notley noted that the ERCB employs a mere 90 inspectors to oversee 400,000 kilometers of pipeline and over 200,000 active wells.

“As things stand now, we are closing our eyes, crossing our fingers, and hoping for the best,” Notley said.  “Albertans deserve better.”

Alberta’s NDP Opposition – On Your Side.

#501 Legislature Annex, 9718-107 St, Edmonton, AB. T5K 1E4

www.NDPopposition.ab.ca

By Dave Cooper and DAN HEALING, Edmonton Journal and CALGARY HERALD July 10, 2012 9:54 AM