Alberta rolling power blackouts spark call for investigation

I know irony's almost the default perspective for looking at the world today, but news that Alberta was hit by rolling blackouts on Monday most definitely rates as ironic.

Residents of Canada's energy capital found themselves sweating in the dark after high electricity demand combined with power-generation problems left thousands of Albertans temporarily without power.

The incident, just as the Calgary Stampede gets rolling, had Alberta Energy Minister Ken Hughes demanding an explanation and opposition MLAs calling for a full investigation, the Calgary Herald reported.

Officials know what happened, just not how circumstances conspired to force the institution of rolling blackouts to avoid a complete crash of Alberta's power grid.

Hughes confirmed four coal-burning power plants went down Monday and (if you want more irony) there was no wind to power the province's wind turbines.

"Oh, I'll be getting an explanation. I just don't have it in hand right now," Hughes told the Herald.

TransAlta Utilities' Sundance 3 plant had been out of commission since last Friday. Then early Monday morning, Atco Power's Battle River No. 5 plant went down, followed in the afternoon by TransAlta's Keephills 1, Capital Power's Genesee 2 and Atco Power's Joffre CT201 plants, the Edmonton Journal said.

Capital Power said its plant suffered an instrument malfunction and shut down automatically but was back in operation by late Monday afternoon. Its three natural-gas fired plants were switched on immediately, replacing some of the power, but not enough to make up for the loss of the other three plants.

"When Genesee went down, and with the other plants off, the province was short 1,200-MW of power," Capital spokesman Michael Sheehan, told the Journal.

Atco Power spokesman Paul Wright said the company's not sure what went wrong at its plant.

"We are still assessing the situation there, but this unit is the newest and largest at Battle River," he told the Journal.

Hot weather boosts demands for refrigeration and air conditioning, leading to a supply imbalance that has prompted the Alberta Electric System Operator, which manages the provincial grid, to call for cuts in usage in a news release Monday afternoon.

But that didn't prevent the need to order power cuts across the province, including in Calgary and Edmonton, which came without warning.

"That's the nature of electricity services, that capacity comes on and goes off the system without much notice, so one will seldom get notice of a shortage of capacity," said Hughes.

"You can anticipate scheduled outages, you can anticipate high demand on a hot day, but what we couldn't anticipate was there would be a combination of a number of facilities going down and the wind not blowing all at the same time."

Hughes called the rolling blackouts, only the second such incident in Alberta in 10 years, bad timing. But the official opposition said it's evidence the Progressive Conservative government has mismanaged the Alberta's deregulated energy market.

Wildrose MLA Joe Anglin pointed to reports in the past of power companies triggering "unexpected" shutdowns to reduce supply and spike electricity prices.

The Journal noted that last fall TransAlta was fined $370,000 after admitting it manipulated electricity prices by blocking cheaper hydro power imports from British Columbia for a couple of days in 2010. The resultant artificial power shortage cost Alberta electricity consumers an extra $5.5 million.

NDP MLA REacel Notley said re-regulating the electricity market would reduce opportunities for such manipulation.

[Related: Independent committee to review Alberta electricity retail market]

But Hughes said these appear to have been legitimate outages.

"Everybody in the system would know that if there is any evidence of any deliberate effort to manipulate the system, that would be treated very seriously," he said.

CBC News reported that power was restored in Calgary late Monday afternoon and in Edmonton a couple of hours later.

Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi said he was told the rolling blackouts were necessary because there was "great concern that would bring the entire power grid down."