If Nalcor got the peak load wrong #nlpoli

The rolling blackouts on the island of Newfoundland could warn of bigger problems to come, if a new paper by the analyst JM is correct.

Underestimating peak load and the potential impact on the Muskrat Falls solution

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The Third Line #nlpoli

Most people in Newfoundland and Labrador never think about the electricity into their homes.  They don’t know where it comes from and they certainly don’t have any idea how it gets from the generating plants to their fridges, washing machines, and television sets.

People are thinking about those things a lot more these days, in the wake of the recent power supply crisis.

One of the issues you will likely hear a lot more about in upcoming hearings by the public utilities board is about a new power transmission line from the hydro generating station at Bay d’Espoir across the isthmus and on to Holyrood.

Here’s some additional information about the project.

“Independent” Review #darknl #nlpoli

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The Confidence Campaign #nlpoli #darknl

The provincial government started its campaign to gain control of the political agenda on Thursday with its announcement that it would appoint someone to do something sometime in the future.

The conventional media outlets didn’t report Premier Kathy Dunderdale’s announcement that way.  The Telegram, for example, called it an “independent” review but acknowledged in the second sentence of its brief story that Dunderdale “doesn't know the shape or scope of the review”. 

CBC went farther in its online story, saying that the “independent review” would “look at the current electrical system in Newfoundland and Labrador; how it operates, how it is managed, and how it is regulated as the province moves from an isolated system to an interconnected system.”

But really, all of that is just an unsubstantiated claim, given that the news release includes these words in a quote attributed to the Premier:

…over the next six weeks my government will work to draft terms of reference and identify an independent body to conduct a review.

Smoke from the fireplace #nlpoli

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Dunderstan #nlpoli

In January 2012, Ed Martin and his nasally drone ridiculed the idea of shifting demand for electricity from one part of the day to another so that his company wouldn’t have a problem meeting spikes in demand during the winter.

He dismissed the idea as “theoretical” even though it’s widely used across Canada in places where the electricity system is well managed.

Two years later, almost to the day, energy conservation and demand management are Martin’s best friend to help people get through what his Conservative friends are willing to concede was the current “inconvenience.” 

Crises within crises #nlpoli

The action of the Soviet Union, Winston Churchill once said, “is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.”

Some people in Newfoundland and Labrador likely felt that way after Day Three of Kathy Dunderdale’s one woman crusade to deny that the province is experiencing a crisis.

Most people just cock their heads to one side and mouth the three letters W, T, and F.

A tale of two crises #nlpoli

Kathy Dunderdale did two major interviews on the first working day since the start of the Nalcor generation crisis.

One was with registered Nalcor lobbyist Tim Powers (# 777504-14002) who is currently holding down a guest spot hosting on VOCM.  The whole interview is actually online at vocm.com.  The second was with CBC’s John Furlong on Radio Noon.  As of Monday night, it wasn’t online.  She also had a media availability later in the day with Earl Ludlow from Newfoundland Power.

If you heard both great interviews.  If not,  listen to the VOCM one. Powers repeated the interview on Monday night when he co-hosted the night-time talk show with Jonathan Richler.  You’ll hear a whole lot that confirms the observations we made here on Monday.  Let’s walk through the day.

The Great Blizzard/Blackout 2014 #nlpoli

Some observations:

1.  Yep.  It’s a crisis.

When you have a major utility cutting electricity to people in a blizzard at random, for random periods of time because it cannot supply enough electricity to meet demand, you have a crisis.

That’s what it feels like to the people in it.  That’s what it is.

People never knew when their lights would be on or off, nor would they know for how long.  The Newfoundland Power and the NL Hydro operations people who briefed the public were straightforward and factual.  They did their jobs well.

The thing is that the public emergency system, including the politicians, didn’t clue in that randomly shutting off power to thousands of voters at a time over the course of several days might be a bit of a problem for the voters.

The SRBP 9th Anniversary #nlpoli

It all started on January 3, 2005 and as of today, the Sir Robert Bond Papers is nine years old.

As your humble e-scribbler writes this on Thursday evening, the gang at Nalcor have managed the provincial electrical system so ineffectively that on the coldest night of the year so far,  they are forcing people to live for unspecified periods in complete darkness without heat so that Nalcor can cope with the load on the island transmission grid.

These same people are now building a massive hydro-electric project that will produce some of the most expensive electricity in North America and force those consumers currently freezing in the dark to pay for it.

Someone actually tweeted on Thursday night that this was Nalcor’s worst case scenario.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Nalcor gambled and got it wrong.

Taxpayers are bearing the cost.

It’s the same as Muskrat Falls. And as SRBP enters its 10th year,  there’s something fitting about that situation, given the post from 3 January 2011 pointed out that the fact that consumers in this province are taking all the risk and paying all the bills remains one of the fundamental problems with the entire Muskrat Falls project.  

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The 2013 SRBP Themes (Part 3) #nlpoli

Government is about making decisions.

In trying to understand what is going on,  how governments make decisions is sometimes more important than what decisions get made.

That’s why SRBP has highlighted things about the structure and organization of government.  The past year was no exception.

The 2013 SRBP Themes (Part 2) #nlpoli

Federal provincial relations

Cast your mind back to the early part of 2012.  Kathy Dunderdale was frustrated.  She couldn’t figure out how to deal with the crowd in Ottawa. 

Suck up to them. 

Attack them. 

Didn’t matter.

They still wouldn’t do what Kathy wanted.

The 2013 SRBP Themes (Part 1) #nlpoli

The end of the calendar always brings the string of Best of, Top 10, and any other kind of year in review piece.  In the conventional media it’s the season of the interview with leading politicians.

At SRBP this year we did a Top 13 for ‘13 list.  It just ran through all the posts and pages that attracted the largest number of readers during the year.

You get a bit of a different picture of the year when you go through the posts month by month to see what turns up.  Patterns emerge that aren’t as readily apparent when you are reading them – or writing them – daily.

The SRBP Top 13 for 2013 #nlpoli

For your reading pleasure as we head into the last weekend of 2013 is the list of the top 13 stories at SRBP, as determined by what the readers turned to most:

O Holy Night

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Sleigh Ride

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The Hollowmen of Newfoundland and Labrador #nlpoli

Some of you may have been surprised to find out this weekend that Nalcor has a scheme to import cheap electricity into the province.

A couple of Nalcor officials could barely contain their excitement in an interview with the Telegram’s James McLeod. Here’s the idea in a nutshell:

Essentially, Nalcor would slow down or shut off some of its hydro dams and let the water build up in the reservoir, while buying cheap power from the market. Then later, during peak demand times on the mainland, Nalcor would run the hydro dams flat out and turn a profit.

You are probably scratching your head because the provincial government has always insisted Muskrat Falls was the cheapest way to supply the province with electricity.

Well, now you know they lied.

But that’s really the smallest implication of the weekend story.

Ghouls, vultures, and a-holes #nlpoli

The marine rescue sub-centre story is one of those things that typifies politics in Newfoundland and Labrador.

It’s entirely the creation of a few politicians with their own agenda and a whole bunch of other sincere, well-meaning people have gotten sucked into what is – essentially  - a complete pile of shite.

Province abandons fisheries policy…quietly #nlpoli

Two years.

That’s all it took to destroy the provincial government’s historic fisheries policy that had been built on the highly successful state-controlled model pioneered by such economic powerhouses as the Soviet Union, Albania, and North Korea.

Record churn in senior public service in 2013 #nlpoli

Three deputy minister appointments announced on Tuesday brings the number of senior executive appointments in the public service to 24 in the second half of 2013, according to information from the provincial government’s Order in Council database.

That brings the total number of senior executive appointments in 2013 to 51.  Cabinet made 27 such appointments in the first six months of the year.  Cabinet made 12 of them in the first quarter.

Since one of the appointments was a temporary job for a senior deputy minister who retired in September, you could reduce the total to 50.  But that’s still a record, compared to the previous record 49 senior appointments made in 2012.

In the past decade cabinet has typically made a series of senior appointments in December.  That means there is still plenty of time to move the new record significantly higher.

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Related:

• Churn, churn, churn  (August 2013)
• The poster child for churn (August 2013)