Hungry for power

Toronto and its suburbs are emerging as trouble spots in the electricity grid

There are solutions in the works but time is growing short

Toronto Star - December 24, 2003
by John Spears

Now for some serious attention to one of the looming trouble spots in Ontario's electricity grid: Toronto.

Planners have singled out Canada's biggest city and its suburbs as an area that needs either more wires or more generators to supply its increasing thirst for power.

In the dry words of the Independent Electricity Market Operator's 10-year outlook statement:

"Significant transmission reinforcement is required in the Greater Toronto Area in order to maintain an acceptable level of supply reliability over the outlook period."

Solutions are in the works, but time is pressing and one crucial link to supply downtown Toronto is still in the "conceptual stage," while another has yet to receive environmental approval.

Paul Murphy, chief operating officer of the IMO, has Toronto firmly in the middle of his radar screen, and says if all goes well Toronto should have an adequate supply of reliable power.

But it's also the IMO's job to worry — to point out the stresses and strains in the system — and Murphy says the Toronto area faces three pressures.

One is the continuing rise in demand for power in the thriving downtown core. A second is strong growth in the GTA's suburban areas. And a third is the scheduled shutdown of the Lakeview generating station in Mississauga little more than a year from now, in April, 2005.

In the downtown, the need for new power is growing more acute.

"There are essentially two supplies that come into Toronto, one from the east and one from the west," Murphy said in an interview. "As load grows in the downtown area, those facilities are approaching the limits of their capabilities."

With demand increasing and one local source of power about to disappear, there are two choices: Build new generators in the Toronto area or add more wires to bring power in from elsewhere.

"We've identified 2006 as the date when we'd like to see reinforcement of generation facilities or transmission facilities." That's not far off, but Murphy says solutions are on the drawing board.

One is a 550-megawatt gas-fired generating plant planned for Toronto's Portlands area, a joint venture between Ontario Power Generation and TransCanada Corp. The IMO has it pencilled in for 2006, but that's not certain. For one thing, the environmental assessment isn't completed.

OPG declines to predict when environmental approval might be granted, and notes it will take two years to build the plant if and when it is approved.

A pair of natural gas-fired plants totalling 1,600 megawatts that could replace Lakeview has been proposed by Sithe Energies Canadian Development Ltd. One would be in Brampton, the other in Mississauga, but both are in a holding pattern as the company awaits clearer policy signals from the provincial government.

Still, there are other possibilities.

Hydro One has proposed a pair of options to increase the flow of electricity into the downtown.

One would involve stringing new wires in from west of the city. The other — the one preferred by the IMO — is to construct an underwater line from the Niagara area into downtown Toronto. It would have the added benefit of providing a better connection between the eastern and western halves of the city.

"They can be linked, which allows for greater flexibility transferring loads back and forth from one side to another, which helps reliability." Both of those are long-term projects. Hydro One says the underwater line is still "conceptual."

"Neither of the complete third supply options could be done by 2006," Murphy acknowledged. Both could be built in stages and "the early stages could be done earlier," he said. How early would that be? "Can't say for sure whether it could be done by 2006, at this stage."

The downtown core isn't the only concern.

Rapidly expanding suburbs around Toronto are also hungry for power.

The return to service of one 505-megawatt reactor at the Pickering nuclear station will help supply eastern parts of the GTA, but more is needed.

That's in some ways a simpler problem than getting new supplies into downtown Toronto, because a major Hydro One transmission corridor runs across the top end of Toronto.

What's needed to serve the suburban areas are more transformers to pull power off the high-voltage wires so it can be used locally.

Hydro One is planning a $136 million upgrade to its transformer station at Warden Ave. and Highway 407, which could be completed by the summer of 2005.

Failing to complete these projects in a timely way won't make the lights suddenly go out in the GTA, according to Murphy, but reliability would suffer.

"It's kind of a gradual problem in a way," he said.

Wear and tear

"Eventually you get into situations where if you have outages with specific equipment, it can create overloads in other equipment."

That makes it hard to take equipment out of service for regular maintenance, leading to increased wear and tear.

"And it makes you more susceptible to forced outages, if you have equipment problems," he said.

Normally there's duplication built into a system, so if one generator or power line breaks down power can be re-routed. If every part of the system is already under strain, it can't pick up the slack easily when there's an unexpected problem.

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