Residents and business owners can take part in the Power Pledge campaign now underway to mark the blackout that hit much of Ontario and the U.S. lakeside states seven years ago.
Cobourg has already signed on to the newly named provincial competition, says Eric Campbell of Go Green Together, adding Cobourg Mayor Peter Delanty will be challenging Port Hope to do the same. At this time, the only other county participant is the Municipality of Brighton, he added.
But even if individual county municipalities don't sign on, individuals and business operators can still participate. The various utilities will monitor electricity use and compare them, Campbell said in an interview.
Here's how you can take part: just use as little electricity as possible between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. this August 11. Contact Go Green Together at 905-377-9217 to sign up, in advance, if the participant is a business, or at www.powerpledge.ca if you are a residential electricity user.
"As added incentive, the first 150,000 Ontarians to make the pledge receive 20 Air Miles Reward Miles... 10,000 renewable energy awards will go to communities with the highest participation rates and that achieve the most conservation on Aug. 11," a media release states.
Although the actual date of the blackout was August 14, 2003, the anniversary falls on a Saturday this year which is a time when electrical use is less, Campbell said.
The challenge day was moved to August 11 "so it can be properly reflective of blackout day," he said.
FERC Hydropower Licensing Dispute centers on FERC authority, Clean Water Act compliance, state water quality certifications, Federal Power Act timelines, and Army Corps dams on West Virginia's Monongahela River licenses.
Key Points
An inquiry into FERC's licensing process and state water quality authority for hydropower at Monongahela River dams.
✅ Questions on omitted state water quality conditions
✅ Debate over starting Clean Water Act certification timelines
✅ Potential impacts on states' rights and licensing schedules
As federal lawmakers, including Democrats pressing FERC, plan to consider a bill that would expand Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) licensing authority, questions emerged on Tuesday about the process used by FERC to issue two hydropower licenses for existing dams in West Virginia.
In a letter to FERC Chairman Neil Chatterjee, Democratic leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, as electricity pricing changes were being debated, raised questions about hydropower licenses issued for two dams operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on the Monongahela River in West Virginia.
U.S. Reps. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-NJ), the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Energy, Bobby Rush (D-IL), the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Environment, and John Sarbanes (D-MD), amid Maryland clean energy enforcement concerns, questioned why FERC did not incorporate all conditions outlined in a West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection water quality certificate into plans for the projects.
“By denying the state its allotted time to review this application and submit requirements on these licenses, FERC is undermining the state’s authority under the Clean Water Act and Federal Power Act to impose conditions that will ensure water quality standards are met,” the letter stated.
The House of Representatives was slated to consider the Hydropower Policy Modernization Act of 2017, H.R. 3043, later in the week. The measure would expand FERC authority over licensing processes, a theme mirrored in Maine's transmission line debate over interstate energy projects. Opponents of the bill argue that the changes would make it more difficult for states to protect their clean water interests.
West Virginia has announced plans to challenge FERC hydropower licenses for the dams on the Monongahela River, echoing Northern Pass opposition seen in New Hampshire.
Ireland 65% Renewable Grid Capability showcases world leading integration of intermittent wind and solar, smart grid flexibility, EU-SysFlex learnings, and the Celtic Interconnector to enhance stability, exports, and energy security across the European grid.
Key Points
Ireland can run its isolated power system with 65% variable wind and solar, informing EU grid integration and scaling.
✅ 65% system non-synchronous penetration on an isolated grid
✅ Celtic Interconnector adds 700MW capacity and stability
Ireland is now able to cope with 65% of its electricity coming from intermittent electricity sources like wind and solar, as highlighted by Ireland's green electricity outlook today – an expertise Energy Minister Denish Naugthen believes can be replicated on a larger scale as Europe moves towards 50% renewable power by 2030.
Denis Naughten is an Irish politician who serves as Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment since May 2016.
Naughten spoke to editor Frédéric Simon on the sidelines of a EURACTIV event in the European Parliament to mark the launch of EU-SysFlex, an EU-funded project, which aims to create a long-term roadmap for the large-scale integration of renewable energy on electricity grids.
What is the reason for your presence in Brussels today and the main message that you came to deliver?
The reason that I’m here today is that we’re going to share the knowledge what we have developed in Ireland, right across Europe. We are now the global leaders in taking variable renewable electricity like wind and solar onto our grid.
We can take a 65% loading on to the grid today – there is no other isolated grid in the world that can do that. We’re going to get up to 75% by 2020. This is a huge technical challenge for any electricity grid and it’s going to be a problem that is going to grow and grow across Europe, even as Europe's electricity demand rises in the coming years, as we move to 50% renewables onto our grid by 2030.
And our knowledge and understanding can be used to help solve the problems right across Europe. And the sharing of technology can mean that we can make our own grid in Ireland far more robust.
What is the contribution of Ireland when it comes to the debate which is currently taking place in Europe about raising the ambition on renewable energy and make the grid fit for that? What are the main milestones that you see looking ahead for Europe and Ireland?
It is a challenge for Europe to do this, but we’ve done it Ireland. We have been able to take a 65% loading of wind power on our grid, with Irish wind generation hitting records recently, so we can replicate that across Europe.
Yes it is about a much larger scale and yes, we need to work collaboratively together, reflecting common goals for electricity networks worldwide – not just in dealing with the technical solutions that we have in Ireland at the fore of this technology, but also replicating them on a larger scale across Europe.
And I believe we can do that, I believe we can use the learnings that we have developed in Ireland and amplify those to deal with far bigger challenges that we have on the European electricity grid.
Trialogue talks have started at European level about the reform of the electricity market. There is talk about decentralised energy generation coming from small-scale producers. Do you see support from all the member states in doing that? And how do you see the challenges ahead on a political level to get everyone on board on such a vision?
I don’t believe there is a political problem here in relation to this. I think there is unanimity across Europe that we need to support consumers in producing electricity for self-consumption and to be able to either store or put that back into the grid.
The issues here are more technical in nature. And how you support a grid to do that. And who actually pays for that. Ireland is very much a microcosm of the pan-European grid and how we can deal with those challenges.
What we’re doing at the moment in Ireland is looking at a pilot scheme to support consumers to generate their own electricity to meet their own needs and to be able to store that on site.
I think in the years to come a lot of that will be actually done with more battery storage in the form of electric vehicles and people would be able to transport that energy from one location to another as and when it’s needed. In the short term, we’re looking at some novel solutions to support consumers producing their own electricity and meeting their own needs.
So I think this is complex from a technical point of view at the moment, I don’t think there is an unwillingness from a political perspective to do it, and I think working with this particular initiative and other initiatives across Europe, we can crack those technical challenges.
To conclude, last year, the European Commission allocated €4 million to a project to link up the Irish electricity grid to France. How is that going to benefit Ireland? And is that related to worries that you may have over Brexit?
The plan, which is called the Celtic Interconnector, is to link France with the Irish electricity grid. It’s going to have a capacity of about 700MW. It allows us to provide additional stability on our grid and enables us to take more renewables onto the grid. It also allows us to export renewable electricity onto the main European grid as well, and provide stability to the French network.
So it’s a benefit to both individual networks as well as allowing far more renewables onto the grid. We’ve been working quite closely with RTE in France and with both regulators. We’re hoping to get the support of the European Commission to move it now from the design stage onto the construction stage. And I understand discussions are ongoing with the Commission at present with regard to that.
And that is going to diversify potential sources of electricity coming in for Ireland in a situation which is pretty uncertain because of Brexit, correct?
Well, I don’t think there is uncertainty because of Brexit in that we have agreements with the United Kingdom, we’re still going to be part of the broader energy family in relation to back-and-forth supply across the Irish Sea, with grid reinforcements in Scotland underscoring reliability needs. But I think it is important in terms of meeting the 15% interconnectivity that the EU has set in relation to electricity.
And also in relation of providing us with an alternative support in relation to electricity supply outside of Britain. Because Britain is now leaving the European Union and I think this is important from a political point of view, and from a broader energy security point of view. But we don’t see it in the short term as causing threats in relation to security of supply.
Manitoba Hydro Phone Scam targets small businesses with disconnection threats, prepaid card payments, caller ID spoofing, phishing texts, and door-to-door fraud; hang up, verify your account directly, and never share banking information.
Key Points
A scam where callers threaten disconnection and demand prepaid cards; verify account status directly with Manitoba Hydro.
✅ Hang up and call Manitoba Hydro at 1-888-624-9376 to verify.
✅ Never pay by prepaid cards, gift cards, or crypto.
✅ Hydro will not cut power on one-hour notice.
Manitoba Hydro is warning customers, particularly small business owners, to be wary of high-pressure scammers, as Ontario utilities warn of scams in other provinces, threatening to shut off their electricity.
The callers demand the customer to make immediate payment by a prepaid card. Often, the calls are made in the middle of the day at a busy time, frightening the customer with aggressive threats about disconnection, as hydro disconnections have made headlines elsewhere, says hydro spokesman Bruce Owen.
"They tell them 'we have a truck on the way to cut off your power. If you don't pay in the next hour you're out of luck,'" he said.
"And because these folks have inventory in freezers and they have customers … they're willing to fork over several hundred or even several thousand dollars on a prepaid card to somebody they don't know to keep the lights on."
Maybe the business owners can't recall, with everything happening, including discussions about Hydro One peak rates in Ontario, if they've made their payments on time. They start second-guessing and believing the person on the other line, Owen says.
And they worry about losing thousands of dollars in business if they lose power. So they're more than willing to run out to a store, buy a prepaid debit card and provide the number to the caller.
"Their goal is to manipulate you into sending money before you figure out it's a scam," said Chris McColm, hydro's security and investigations supervisor. "These people are crooks and you should hang up on them."
For any customers that are in arrears, hydro will work with them to resolve the issue, Owen said.
"We do not have to take that extreme measure of cutting off or disconnecting anybody. That's not the business we're in — we don't strong arm people that way," he said.
"Anybody who's threatening to cut off your power with an hour or half-an-hour notice, well it's it's no better than someone waiting around the corner, waiting the club you over the head in the dark of night. That's what they are."
Fraud reports soar
The power utility has recorded a nearly-300 per cent jump in the number of fraud-related complaints this year over 2017. There have been 862 phone, text and e-mail scams and that could still go much higher.
The current statistics from 2018 have only calculated up to Oct. 31. In 2017, there were 221.
That jump in numbers doesn't necessarily mean there are more scammers out there.
It could simply mean people are finally getting wise to fraudsters and reporting it more, Owen says.
"At the same token, we don't hear of everybody who's been taking advantage of because once they've found out that they've been hoodwinked they don't want to tell anybody because they're so embarrassed," he said.
"These scammers can be very convincing and anyone can be victimized," McColm said.
If you are able to think clearly when some high-pressure caller gets you on the line, Owen suggests asking a few simple questions to challenge their legitimacy:
What street am I on?
What does my business look like?
What's the weather outside right now?
Phone scammers can falsify their caller ID information to make it appear they're calling from a local number, but what you'll find is most of them aren't in Winnipeg or Manitoba and likely not even this country or continent, Owen says.
The key to being safe is simply to never give out banking information, Owen says. It's a message that has been stressed for years and 80-90 per cent of people understand it, but it's that other 10-20 per cent that are still being victimized.And it's not just phone calls. Many other fraud-related complaints to Manitoba Hydro this year concerned unsolicited text messages to customers saying they had been overbilled, or faced retroactive charges elsewhere, and were eligible for a refund.
This scam is also aimed at getting a customer's personal banking information, under the guise of having money put back into their account.
Also, many people, especially seniors living alone, continue to be targeted by aggressive door-to-door fraudsters, and cases like the electricity theft ring in Montreal underscore the risks, McColm says. However, he adds, hydro employees always display photo ID and will never demand to come into a home.
If you're unsure whether a phone call, text or email is real or a scam, contact Manitoba Hydro at 1-888-624-9376.
ITER Nuclear Fusion advances tokamak magnetic confinement, heating deuterium-tritium plasma with superconducting magnets, targeting net energy gain, tritium breeding, and steam-turbine power, while complementing laser inertial confinement milestones for grid-scale electricity and 2025 startup goals.
Key Points
ITER Nuclear Fusion is a tokamak project confining D-T plasma with magnets to achieve net energy gain and clean power.
✅ Tokamak magnetic confinement with high-temp superconducting coils
✅ Deuterium-tritium fuel cycle with on-site tritium breeding
✅ Targets net energy gain and grid-scale, low-carbon electricity
It sounds like the stuff of dreams: a virtually limitless source of energy that doesn’t produce greenhouse gases or radioactive waste. That’s the promise of nuclear fusion, often described as the holy grail of clean energy by proponents, which for decades has been nothing more than a fantasy due to insurmountable technical challenges. But things are heating up in what has turned into a race to create what amounts to an artificial sun here on Earth, one that can provide power for our kettles, cars and light bulbs.
Today’s nuclear power plants create electricity through nuclear fission, in which atoms are split, with next-gen nuclear power exploring smaller, cheaper, safer designs that remain distinct from fusion. Nuclear fusion however, involves combining atomic nuclei to release energy. It’s the same reaction that’s taking place at the Sun’s core. But overcoming the natural repulsion between atomic nuclei and maintaining the right conditions for fusion to occur isn’t straightforward. And doing so in a way that produces more energy than the reaction consumes has been beyond the grasp of the finest minds in physics for decades.
But perhaps not for much longer. Some major technical challenges have been overcome in the past few years and governments around the world have been pouring money into fusion power research as part of a broader green industrial revolution under way in several regions. There are also over 20 private ventures in the UK, US, Europe, China and Australia vying to be the first to make fusion energy production a reality.
“People are saying, ‘If it really is the ultimate solution, let’s find out whether it works or not,’” says Dr Tim Luce, head of science and operation at the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), being built in southeast France. ITER is the biggest throw of the fusion dice yet.
Its $22bn (£15.9bn) build cost is being met by the governments of two-thirds of the world’s population, including the EU, the US, China and Russia, at a time when Europe is losing nuclear power and needs energy, and when it’s fired up in 2025 it’ll be the world’s largest fusion reactor. If it works, ITER will transform fusion power from being the stuff of dreams into a viable energy source.
Constructing a nuclear fusion reactor ITER will be a tokamak reactor – thought to be the best hope for fusion power. Inside a tokamak, a gas, often a hydrogen isotope called deuterium, is subjected to intense heat and pressure, forcing electrons out of the atoms. This creates a plasma – a superheated, ionised gas – that has to be contained by intense magnetic fields.
The containment is vital, as no material on Earth could withstand the intense heat (100,000,000°C and above) that the plasma has to reach so that fusion can begin. It’s close to 10 times the heat at the Sun’s core, and temperatures like that are needed in a tokamak because the gravitational pressure within the Sun can’t be recreated.
When atomic nuclei do start to fuse, vast amounts of energy are released. While the experimental reactors currently in operation release that energy as heat, in a fusion reactor power plant, the heat would be used to produce steam that would drive turbines to generate electricity, even as some envision nuclear beyond electricity for industrial heat and fuels.
Tokamaks aren’t the only fusion reactors being tried. Another type of reactor uses lasers to heat and compress a hydrogen fuel to initiate fusion. In August 2021, one such device at the National Ignition Facility, at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, generated 1.35 megajoules of energy. This record-breaking figure brings fusion power a step closer to net energy gain, but most hopes are still pinned on tokamak reactors rather than lasers.
In June 2021, China’s Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) reactor maintained a plasma for 101 seconds at 120,000,000°C. Before that, the record was 20 seconds. Ultimately, a fusion reactor would need to sustain the plasma indefinitely – or at least for eight-hour ‘pulses’ during periods of peak electricity demand.
A real game-changer for tokamaks has been the magnets used to produce the magnetic field. “We know how to make magnets that generate a very high magnetic field from copper or other kinds of metal, but you would pay a fortune for the electricity. It wouldn’t be a net energy gain from the plant,” says Luce.
One route for nuclear fusion is to use atoms of deuterium and tritium, both isotopes of hydrogen. They fuse under incredible heat and pressure, and the resulting products release energy as heat
The solution is to use high-temperature, superconducting magnets made from superconducting wire, or ‘tape’, that has no electrical resistance. These magnets can create intense magnetic fields and don’t lose energy as heat.
“High temperature superconductivity has been known about for 35 years. But the manufacturing capability to make tape in the lengths that would be required to make a reasonable fusion coil has just recently been developed,” says Luce. One of ITER’s magnets, the central solenoid, will produce a field of 13 tesla – 280,000 times Earth’s magnetic field.
The inner walls of ITER’s vacuum vessel, where the fusion will occur, will be lined with beryllium, a metal that won’t contaminate the plasma much if they touch. At the bottom is the divertor that will keep the temperature inside the reactor under control.
“The heat load on the divertor can be as large as in a rocket nozzle,” says Luce. “Rocket nozzles work because you can get into orbit within minutes and in space it’s really cold.” In a fusion reactor, a divertor would need to withstand this heat indefinitely and at ITER they’ll be testing one made out of tungsten.
Meanwhile, in the US, the National Spherical Torus Experiment – Upgrade (NSTX-U) fusion reactor will be fired up in the autumn of 2022, while efforts in advanced fission such as a mini-reactor design are also progressing. One of its priorities will be to see whether lining the reactor with lithium helps to keep the plasma stable.
Choosing a fuel Instead of just using deuterium as the fusion fuel, ITER will use deuterium mixed with tritium, another hydrogen isotope. The deuterium-tritium blend offers the best chance of getting significantly more power out than is put in. Proponents of fusion power say one reason the technology is safe is that the fuel needs to be constantly fed into the reactor to keep fusion happening, making a runaway reaction impossible.
Deuterium can be extracted from seawater, so there’s a virtually limitless supply of it. But only 20kg of tritium are thought to exist worldwide, so fusion power plants will have to produce it (ITER will develop technology to ‘breed’ tritium). While some radioactive waste will be produced in a fusion plant, it’ll have a lifetime of around 100 years, rather than the thousands of years from fission.
At the time of writing in September, researchers at the Joint European Torus (JET) fusion reactor in Oxfordshire were due to start their deuterium-tritium fusion reactions. “JET will help ITER prepare a choice of machine parameters to optimise the fusion power,” says Dr Joelle Mailloux, one of the scientific programme leaders at JET. These parameters will include finding the best combination of deuterium and tritium, and establishing how the current is increased in the magnets before fusion starts.
The groundwork laid down at JET should accelerate ITER’s efforts to accomplish net energy gain. ITER will produce ‘first plasma’ in December 2025 and be cranked up to full power over the following decade. Its plasma temperature will reach 150,000,000°C and its target is to produce 500 megawatts of fusion power for every 50 megawatts of input heating power.
“If ITER is successful, it’ll eliminate most, if not all, doubts about the science and liberate money for technology development,” says Luce. That technology development will be demonstration fusion power plants that actually produce electricity, where advanced reactors can build on decades of expertise. “ITER is opening the door and saying, yeah, this works – the science is there.”
Port of Vancouver Wind Turbine Blades arrive from China for a Saskatchewan wind farm, showcasing record oversized cargo logistics, tandem crane handling, renewable energy capacity, and North America's longest blades from Goldwind.
Key Points
Record-length blades for a Canadian wind farm, boosting renewable energy and requiring heavy-lift logistics at the port.
✅ 27 blades unloaded via tandem cranes with cage supports
✅ 50 turbines headed to Assiniboia over 21 weeks
✅ Largest 250 ft blades to arrive; reduced CO2 vs coal
A set of 220-foot-long wind turbine blades arrived at the Port of Vancouver from China over the weekend as part a shipment bound for a wind farm in Canada, alongside BC generating stations coming online in the region.
They’re the largest blades ever handled by the port, and this summer, even larger blades will arrive as companies expand production such as GE’s blade factory in France to meet demand — the largest North America has ever seen.
Alex Strogen described the scene as crews used two tandem cranes to unload 27 giant white blades from the MV Star Kilimanjaro, which picked up the wind turbine assemblies in China. They were manufactured by Goldwind Co.
“When you see these things come off and put onto these trailers, it’s exceptional in the sheer length of them,” Strogen said. “It looks as long as an airplane.”
In fact, each blade is about as long as the wingspan of a Boeing 747.
Groups of longshoremen attached the cranes to each blade and hoisted it into the air and onto a waiting truck. Metal cage-like devices on both ends kept the blades from touching the ground. Once loaded onto the trucks, the blades and shaft parts head to a terminal to be unloaded by another group of workers.
Another fleet of trucks will drive the wind turbines, towers and blades to Assiniboia, Saskatchewan, Canada, over the course of 21 weeks. Potentia Renewables of Toronto is erecting the turbines on 34,000 acres of leased agriculture land, amid wind farm expansion in PEI elsewhere in the country, according to a news release from the Port of Vancouver.
Potentia’s project, called the Golden South Wind Project, will generate approximately 900,000 megawatt-hours of electricity. It also has greatly reduced CO2 emissions compared with a coal-fired plant, and complements tidal power in Nova Scotia in Canada’s clean energy mix, according to the news release.
The Port of Vancouver will receive 50 full turbines of two models for the project, as Manitoba invests in new turbines across Canada. In August, the larger of the models, with blades measuring 250 feet, will arrive. They’ll be the longest blades ever imported into any port in North America.
“It’s an exciting year for the port,” said Ryan Hart, chief external affairs officer.
The Port of Vancouver is following all the recommended safety precautions during the COVID-19 pandemic, including social distancing and face masks, Strogen said, with support from initiatives like Bruce Power’s PPE donation across Canada. As for crews onboard the ships, the U.S. Coast Guard is the agency in charge, and it is monitoring the last port-of-call for all vessels seeking to enter the Columbia River, Hart wrote in an email.
Vessel masters on each ship are responsible for monitoring the health of the crew and are required to report sick or ill crew members to the USCG prior to arrival or face fines and potential arrest.
BC Hydro Deferred Regulatory Assets detail $5.5 billion in costs under rate-regulated accounting, to be recovered from ratepayers, highlighting B.C. Utilities Commission oversight, audit scrutiny, financial reporting impacts, and public utility governance.
Key Points
BC Hydro defers costs as regulatory assets to recover from ratepayers, influencing rates and financial reporting.
✅ $5.5B in deferred costs recorded as net regulatory assets
✅ Rate impacts tied to B.C. Utilities Commission oversight
✅ Auditor General to assess accounting and governance
Auditor General Carol Bellringer says BC Hydro has deferred $5.5 billion in expenses that it plans to recover from ratepayers in the future, as rates to rise by 3.75% over two years.
Bellringer focuses on the deferred expenses in a report on the public utility's use of rate-regulated accounting to control electricity rates for customers.
"As of March 31, 2018, BC Hydro reported a total net regulatory asset of $5.455 billion, which is what ratepayers owe," says the report. "BC Hydro expects to recover this from ratepayers in the future. For BC Hydro, this is an asset. For ratepayers, this is a debt."
She says rate-regulated accounting is used widely across North America, but cautions that Hydro has largely overridden the role of the independent B.C. Utilities Commission to regulate rates.
"We think it's important for the people of B.C. and our members of the legislative assembly to better understand rate-regulated accounting in order to appreciate the impact it has on the bottom line for BC Hydro, for government as a whole, for ratepayers and for taxpayers, especially following a three per cent rate increase in April 2018," Bellringer said in a conference call with reporters.
Last June, the B.C. government launched a two-phase review of BC Hydro to find cost savings and look at the direction of the Crown utility, amid calls for change from advocates.
The review came shortly after a planned government rate freeze was overturned by the utilities commission, which resulted in a three per cent rate increase in April 2018.
A statement by BC Hydro and the government says a key objective of the review due this month is to enhance the regulatory oversight of the commission.
Bellringer's office will become BC Hydro's auditor next year — and will be assessing the impact of regulation on the utility's financial reporting.
"It is a complex area and confidence in the regulatory system is critical to protect the public interest," wrote Bellringer.
