Auckland's power blackouts

Natural disasters are one thing. Manufactured mishaps, another

Toronto Star - March 16, 1998
by Colin Vaughan

The ice storm that swept eastern Canada in January and cut power in cities such as Kingston and Montreal must be seen as more of a natural disaster than man-made. Sure, engineers could have designed for the very worst weather conditions imaginable. And, sure, society could have picked up the enormous cost of averting such a catastrophe. But that's always a judgment call.

However, the power blackout that has hit Auckland, New Zealand's largest city, has all the earmarks of a man-made crisis.

The local media recite the whole sorry saga. On Feb. 21, after a series of power outages, the last of four main cables supplying Auckland's central business district failed. Only partial power has been restored since. Authorities now estimate it could be as long as seven weeks before full power is hooked up again.

The central city was ordered shut down for the first week. Police reinforcements were rushed in to guard downtown property. The generators of a merchant ship docked in the harbour were pressed into service. Large firms could afford to fly in generators from overseas. Small enterprises face bankruptcy. New directives require some businesses to open only mornings, others afternoons. The situation in the city has been described as chaotic and ``Third-World conditions at their worst.''

The culprit, according to the critics: privatization of New Zealand's electricity system. There have been charges that Auckland's private power retailer, Mercury Energy, cut back maintenance and technical staff as it pursued other utility takeovers. The company has been accused of ``putting profits before efficient service.'' Mercury denies these charges, dubbing the power failure as ``freakish bad luck.'' An embarrassed national government has launched an inquiry.

New Zealand began down the road toward full power privatization in the late 1980s. Many local utility boards were replaced by public or private companies. The Auckland disaster is expected to derail the next phase, the privatization of the generation and distribution system.

Could it happen here? In the case of a natural disaster, a Toronto Hydro official told me last week that the January ice storm alerted the utility to the fragility of the power distribution system. Along with the added complication of merging the present six municipal Hydro authorities, the newly amalgamated agency is responding to public pressure to come up with a disaster contingency plan. The bad news is that the ice storm was a wake-up call and local authorities were only spurred ``to study it after the fact.''

As for supply, Toronto Hydro relies on three generating corridors - Pickering-Darlington, Bruce and Niagara - for power. The electricity is stepped down to eight sub-stations serving the central business district. Redundancy is built in all around. In theory, if one of the generating sources or transmission lines went down, the others would pick up the load. But all three power corridors or the eight sub-stations going down at the same time? Impossible, you say. Aucklanders must have felt the same about those four main cables.

More worrisome is that Queen's Park is committed to launching competition in Ontario's electricity market by 2000. After that date, users will be able to pick and choose between the present public utilities and private sector suppliers. Price will become a major determinant. Although we will be told, as New Zealanders were told, that the aim is to make the system ``safe, secure and reliable,'' competitive pressures will tempt suppliers to cut corners when it comes to maintenance. As one Toronto Hydro manager put it, skimp on maintenance and failure ``is then only a matter of time.''

Toronto Hydro is talking of fighting to have the present Ontario Energy Board continue monitoring the power supply and distribution system. The utility wants ``stiff maintenance standards'' to ensure an uninterrupted service once neophyte private sector firms begin nibbling at the edges. Such monitoring might blunt competition but would help reassure customers there would be no echo of Auckland here.

Sadly, when I called the Ontario Energy Minister's office last week and asked if a fact-finding team was on its way to New Zealand, I drew the telephone equivalent of a blank stare.

Privatize if you must. But if you fail to heed the Auckland experience and fail to build in safeguards, throwing the switch on this one might be the only remedy.

Colin Vaughan reports on politics and urban affairs for CITY-TV.

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