Natural
Resources minister Siobhan Coady said she is very concerned about the
continuing problems at the Holyrood generating plant.
The new
Minister of Natural Resources is sounding a lot like the former Tory Minister,
Derrick Dalley. And that’s not a tag synonymous with political success.
The Minister
told the CBC that “the Holyrood plant breaks down too often.
I'm concerned that we have an aging asset, that we have an old furnace in our
house." The CBC reported the Minister stating “the only solution is to
find another way to generate electricity.”
The Minister
would only be right if you agreed all the facts should be ignored.
While
Siobhan Coady hasn’t read The Liberty Report, someone at the Telegram noted,
last year, the Report does not describe a group of “world-class” experts. The
Paper’s Editor concluded “there’s nothing world-class about this situation”,
referring to the management of the province’s electrical system.
I noted on
this Blog, in April 2014: “…Liberty was not assessing the Muskrat Falls project
or the current level of cost overruns.
The Consultants were merely assessing Hydro’s machinery, its capability
to conduct normal maintenance and management procedures, review its demand
assumptions and generally evaluate its ability to keep the lights on,
especially in winter.”
Liberty did
not mince words. It cites failures in the “operation of key transmission
equipment”, including a failure to replace transformers and maintain major
circuit breakers.
Quoting
again from the Report: “Liberty found that Hydro’s shortage of generation
capacity was exacerbated by a failure to complete planned outage work needed to
ensure the availability of its full range of generating facilities as the
winter season began.”
The
situation, it notes, “raises questions about Hydro’s operation” that it “did
not complete recommended maintenance activities on the equipment that failed…”
Liberty said
Hydro wasn’t even using the right models to forecast electricity demand.
It stated
that Hydro relied, not on providing adequate generating capacity, but on
‘outages’ to take us through periods of high demand.
Said
Liberty, “Hydro has planned its system to
the same overall standard for many decades. This standard provides for lower
reliability than what Liberty has observed in other regions of North America” (emphasis
added). It noted that Hydro’s plan is
based upon “roughly twice” the frequency of supply related outages than found
elsewhere. It found that Hydro “tended to allow decisions at the margin to
favor more versus less risk”. (emphasis added)
Liberty
found that a “continuing and unacceptably high risk of outages from such causes
remains for the 2015-2017 winter seasons”.
In its Final
Report, entitled Review of the Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro Voltage Collapse,
dated March 4, 2015 (less than a year ago!) Liberty had these recommendations, among others:
1. Hydro
should assign a team to implement a program to establish a more robust operational
philosophy regarding reliability. Hydro has not agreed that there is a problem
in this area. The continuation of a
reliability culture that does not place higher value on service continuity
requires as a first step an internal evaluation to understand the issue and set
objectives for improvement. The present operational approach will become
even more problematic when the LIL enters service. Hydro should adjust it
promptly. (emphasis added)
2. Hydro
should enhance the skills and capabilities it brings to reliability engineering
and analysis. Our report following the
January 2014 outages found a number of examples of non-standard industry
thinking associated with reliability. The March 4th incident provides another
telling example. This suggests that more conventional approaches and the
skills to implement them are appropriate. (emphasis added)
So how does
Siobhan Coady race to the conclusion, as she told CBC “I'm concerned that we
have an aging asset, that we have an old furnace in our house…. We have to get
an alternate energy capability into this province … we have to make sure we do
the right things."
It is not
difficult to see how bad decisions get made, how Ministers, who are not astute, race to the conclusion: we need Muskrat having erroneously concluded “we have an
old furnace…” Ergo we have to spend our way into penury to get something new.
Those who do
read will want to return to Liberty’s first recommendation and the line “The
present operational approach will become even more problematic when the LIL (Labrador
Island Link) enters service.
Perhaps, as one wit wrote this morning, "the Minister is doing damage control for her new masters".
But, mostly. the Minister reveals the EY Review is unimportant. Regardless of the cost, it seems we have to rush ahead with Muskrat Falls.
Premier Ball: so far we are not impressed!