Electricity watchdog to investigate blackouts

Alberta's electricity watchdog says he will investigate the power outages that rolled through Calgary and Edmonton on Monday afternoon.

Martin Merritt says he'll be asking questions about why demand for electricity outstripped the available supply, resulting in localized blackouts of up to 30 minutes during the afternoon rush hour.

"Were those things the result of you know the randomness of mechanical failures, or were they the result of something that might have been controlled by somebody, who then would have realized a benefit from that?" he said Tuesday.

"At this point there's no evidence that anybody benefited from the random straws that ultimately broke the camel's back."

Merritt is president of the Alberta's Market Surveillance Administrator, an organization created by the province to investigate and recommend sanctions for inappropriate market behaviour.

Opposition calls for investigation

NDP Leader Brian Mason had called on Alberta's auditor general to investigate what went wrong.

Mason said Tuesday he wants to find out why five plants were not generating power at a time it was desperately needed.

The rolling outages Monday were another sign that the province's deregulation of electricity was a mistake, he said. The tight supply caused power prices to hit maximum levels of $1,000 a megawatt.

"If you take [generating] units off-line, the prices of electricity spikes and you make more money. That's in my view a fundamental flaw of deregulation of electricity. I think there needs to be an investigation."

However, Merritt said the government's deregulated electricity system isn't to blame for what happened Monday. The last power outages in Alberta due to shortages happened in 1998, when the province had a regulated system, he said.

Lightning strike to blame?

There is already some finger-pointing going on between Alberta and British Columbia. Alberta Electric System Operator said itordered the blackouts after a lightning strikeshut down atransmission line between the two provinces.

However, a B.C. Hydro spokeswoman said that's not an entirely accurate account of what happened Monday.

"I would suggest that this is a made-in-Alberta problem," Elisha Moreno told CBC News.

"The challenge in Alberta right now is there are outages in some of the coal units in the system. They're not carrying enough energy for reserve for emergency situations and I think unfortunately they're trying to find a scapegoat for a problem that exists within their province."

Albertans asked to turn off the lights

The first sign of a problem came Monday afternoon when the operator put out a call to Albertans to voluntarily reduce their power use Monday afternoon. That was the first such call since 1998.

Albertans have broken six energy-use records since June, mostly due to increased use of air conditioners and irrigation systems.

On Monday, high temperatures taxed a generating system already short about 800 megawatts of power because five coal-fired plants were sitting idle or not connected to the system.

Calgary Mayor Dave Bronconnier said Monday that guaranteeing the power supplies of hospitals was "the first priority" during the blackouts.