Murray Mandryk
You don’t mess with Texas … unless you are cold weather …. or perhaps deregulation of your utilities.
© Michael Bell SaskPower crews work on electrical lines at Pense last month as fog limited visibility. MICHAEL BELL / Regina Leader-Post
The oil-rich Lone Star State that perhaps most personifies American ideals of free enterprise, independence and freedom found itself last week crippled not only by a winter snowstorm but also by the outcome of those ideals.
Of course, the first reaction in a Canadian province like Saskatchewan is our usual sympathetic smugness that we are hardier … and simply better regulated.
While it seems as if we here in Saskatchewan are inching away from the vestiges of our social democratic roots, we remain prideful of publicly owned SaskPower’s mandate of supplying affordable electricity to all 691,900 square kilometres of this province. (We are only slightly smaller than 695,602-square-kilometre Texas.)
But does that mean SaskPower and this province are immune from big Texas-like problems we just witnessed? To a large extent we are, but not completely.
If there is a lesson to be learned from Texas, it is the vital need for stable, affordable-for-all and well-regulated electrical power generation. We mostly get that here, but we do have a penchant to forget that lesson.
What Texas faced last week was its perfect storm — both, in terms of weather and governance policies catching up with them.
Unaccustomed to the -20 C temperature, about 4.7 million Texas homes and businesses were left without electricity, heat and running water because of a lack of insulation. Dozens died from either the cold or the storm’s ensuing traffic accidents and even carbon monoxide poisoning as people desperately tried to stay warm.
Gas intakes at plants and in homes froze in place, not designed for extreme weather, and power lines fell to sleet and freezing rain.
However, much of the blame centred around wind turbines that account for 15.7 per cent or 30,000 megawatts of Texas’s total power production. (This is a state that strongly supports fossil fuels over renewables.)
In Saskatchewan, current only 241 megawatts or five per cent of SaskPower’s total 4,893-megawatt generating capacity comes from wind, with another 387 mw about to be added from the Herbert-Riverhurst-Assiniboia area and an additional 300 mw in planning. Turbines here can spin in temperatures as low as -30 C (with windchill being a non-factor) and the winter average output (92 mw an hour) is actually higher than the yearly average (86 mw an hour).
Part of the Texas problem was that (unlike Saskatchewan) its peak electrical requirements come with air conditioners blasting in the summer and that its rotating blackouts were ill-advised for the extreme cold.
But in Saskatchewan, we face a similar problem with an aging/vulnerable infrastructure in need of replacement that’s become a constant battle for SaskPower and a big part of the reason for skyrocketing utility bills in the past few decades.
In response, the Saskatchewan Party in the October election committed to a 10-per-cent reduction on power bills that will likely mean less capacity for the Crown corporation to deal with infrastructure problems.
Admittedly, the Texas calamity remains unique as it was caused by not only the weather event, but also being a jurisdiction where deregulation, lack of preparedness and utility-cost-cutting have run amok for decades. Adding to the problem is that Texas removed itself from the U.S. national grid to save tax dollars.
By contrast, the protocol for SaskPower — that notably had no outages during the recent cold snap — would be to first cut exports and then purchase excess supply from neighbours.
And while several of SaskPower’s large industrial customers have guaranteed supply contracts, even they can have their power cut back to ensure homes and critical infrastructure like hospitals and care homes get power first. This is something that has happened in the past.
The end result of Texas’s go-it-alone, deregulated approach is Texans who were allowed to choose between competing providers are now being hit with $5,000 bills for five days power usage.
Again, that’s something that wouldn’t happen here, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be vigilant.
The biggest lesson from Texas should be a reassessment of SaskPower to make sure Texas doesn’t happen here.
Mandryk is the political columnist for the Regina Leader-Post and Saskatoon StarPhoenix.
The oil-rich Lone Star State that perhaps most personifies American ideals of free enterprise, independence and freedom found itself last week crippled not only by a winter snowstorm but also by the outcome of those ideals.
Of course, the first reaction in a Canadian province like Saskatchewan is our usual sympathetic smugness that we are hardier … and simply better regulated.
While it seems as if we here in Saskatchewan are inching away from the vestiges of our social democratic roots, we remain prideful of publicly owned SaskPower’s mandate of supplying affordable electricity to all 691,900 square kilometres of this province. (We are only slightly smaller than 695,602-square-kilometre Texas.)
But does that mean SaskPower and this province are immune from big Texas-like problems we just witnessed? To a large extent we are, but not completely.
If there is a lesson to be learned from Texas, it is the vital need for stable, affordable-for-all and well-regulated electrical power generation. We mostly get that here, but we do have a penchant to forget that lesson.
What Texas faced last week was its perfect storm — both, in terms of weather and governance policies catching up with them.
Unaccustomed to the -20 C temperature, about 4.7 million Texas homes and businesses were left without electricity, heat and running water because of a lack of insulation. Dozens died from either the cold or the storm’s ensuing traffic accidents and even carbon monoxide poisoning as people desperately tried to stay warm.
Gas intakes at plants and in homes froze in place, not designed for extreme weather, and power lines fell to sleet and freezing rain.
However, much of the blame centred around wind turbines that account for 15.7 per cent or 30,000 megawatts of Texas’s total power production. (This is a state that strongly supports fossil fuels over renewables.)
In Saskatchewan, current only 241 megawatts or five per cent of SaskPower’s total 4,893-megawatt generating capacity comes from wind, with another 387 mw about to be added from the Herbert-Riverhurst-Assiniboia area and an additional 300 mw in planning. Turbines here can spin in temperatures as low as -30 C (with windchill being a non-factor) and the winter average output (92 mw an hour) is actually higher than the yearly average (86 mw an hour).
Part of the Texas problem was that (unlike Saskatchewan) its peak electrical requirements come with air conditioners blasting in the summer and that its rotating blackouts were ill-advised for the extreme cold.
But in Saskatchewan, we face a similar problem with an aging/vulnerable infrastructure in need of replacement that’s become a constant battle for SaskPower and a big part of the reason for skyrocketing utility bills in the past few decades.
In response, the Saskatchewan Party in the October election committed to a 10-per-cent reduction on power bills that will likely mean less capacity for the Crown corporation to deal with infrastructure problems.
Admittedly, the Texas calamity remains unique as it was caused by not only the weather event, but also being a jurisdiction where deregulation, lack of preparedness and utility-cost-cutting have run amok for decades. Adding to the problem is that Texas removed itself from the U.S. national grid to save tax dollars.
By contrast, the protocol for SaskPower — that notably had no outages during the recent cold snap — would be to first cut exports and then purchase excess supply from neighbours.
And while several of SaskPower’s large industrial customers have guaranteed supply contracts, even they can have their power cut back to ensure homes and critical infrastructure like hospitals and care homes get power first. This is something that has happened in the past.
The end result of Texas’s go-it-alone, deregulated approach is Texans who were allowed to choose between competing providers are now being hit with $5,000 bills for five days power usage.
Again, that’s something that wouldn’t happen here, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be vigilant.
The biggest lesson from Texas should be a reassessment of SaskPower to make sure Texas doesn’t happen here.
Mandryk is the political columnist for the Regina Leader-Post and Saskatoon StarPhoenix.
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