Power grid here kept lights on

Though a large portion of Ontario, not to mention much of the northeastern United States, was without power last Thursday night and parts of Friday, power stayed flowing here—for the most part.
Though some problems occurred locally at Abitibi-Consolidated and Voyageur Panel, and with respect to Internet service, the total blackout that hit major cities including Toronto, Ottawa, New York, Detroit, and Cleveland spared Northwestern Ontario.
“The west side, really the north side of Wawa was not affected,” said Alexandra Cambell, a spokeswomen for the Independent Electricity Market Operator (IMO).
“The northwest is connected to [the rest of] Ontario through one line, so to speak, one tie.”
The IMO is the hub of the electricity wholesale marketplace, according to its Web site, connecting all participants—from the generators and suppliers who sell electricity to the wholesale consumers and distributors who purchase electricity and sell it to consumers.
Cambell explained electricity from Northwestern Ontario was, and still is, used to help stabilize the power grid in southern Ontario.
“We would look at using some of that [electricity generated here] to help start up the rest of Ontario,” she said. “Using any generation available, really, to help bring the whole system back.
“We have made a lot of progress,” she added. “Our control room had the whole province back with power, sort of, by Friday.
“Over the last few days, we have funnelled energy from Manitoba [through the northwest],” Cambell explained. “We [still] need to bring the rest of the generating units back online.
“There’s still five nuclear units and two thermal units to go.”
Cambell noted that when restoring power to a grid, some finesse must be used as to not cause more problems by flooding the system with more energy than can be used.
“When you’re looking at restoring a large power grid, you have to bring load [users] on at the same time as supply so it’s balanced,” she stressed.
This is one of the reasons why the IMO asked Abitibi-Consolidated to wait in starting its three paper machines back up after the power surge that happened at the time of the blackout last Thursday.
“We lost one-and-a-half hours on our #5 machine,” noted mill manager John Harrison. “We lost six-and-a-half hours on machines #6 and #7.
“The IMO specifically told us not to pull power from the grid,” he added. “They were worried about the northwest grid and were needing it to get the rest of the grid up and running.”
NDP leader and local MPP Howard Hampton explained the one transmission line only will allow about 200 megawatts of power to pass through—either flowing into or out of—the northwest every day.
“That’s what saved us,” he said of the limited amount of energy Northwestern Ontario can transfer through its one tie in a day. “If we’d had a much bigger transmission line, it would have sucked the power out of Northwestern Ontario.
“That is also what limits what we can transfer to southern Ontario,” Hampton added.
“Although Northwestern Ontario is connected to the rest of Ontario, it is somewhat isolated in that sense,” Cambell agreed.
Hampton argued that due to that fact, it was useless for the provincial government to close its offices in Northwestern Ontario.
“Closing all the offices in Northwestern Ontario isn’t going to help out,” he said. “The reality is they should be open.
“We have lots of power,” he added, referring to the amount of energy generated here every day. “It’s not making any difference. [It] is completely ridiculous.
“The office closures are all about political image,” Hampton charged. “[Premier Ernie Eves] wants to spin the story so he’s the premier that reconnected the hydro system.”
Hampton believes talk of hydro privatization and deregulation must stop and the province should move forward with public power that puts Ontario’s electricity needs first.
“This government has been playing a risky game with our hydro-electric system,” he said, referring to privatization, deregulation, and ignoring signs that a major blackout might occur.
“We were warned about [potential] blackouts last year and last winter,” he said. “They just kept rolling the dice, [and] the house of cards collapsed.”
Hampton noted the private sector is “happy to see us in a shortage situation because they can charge more when the demand is higher.”
Cambell explained the IMO, in conjunction with the North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC), will be investigating the blackout—the largest in the continent’s history—in the weeks and months ahead.
She said as of early this week, NERC only had pinpointed the source as being “initiated in the Midwest [U.S.]”