[DesuMaiden]

I live in Kitchener Ontario. How do I figure out where my electricity comes from? I want to know the energy source used to produce the electricity in the city I live in. Where can I find the information on where a certain city's electricity comes from? This is an important thing to know, because if your area's electricity comes from renewable sources (such as wind, solar or hydroelectric), then you don't need to worry about the black outs that will accompany oil shortages. Nonrenewable energy sources don't require oil for maintenance. If the electricity in your area of residence is produced by nonrenewable sources (i.e. coal, natural gas, or nuclear), you will have to worry about electricity shortages or black outs when oil shortages happen because nonrenewable energy sources require oil for production. In order to produce coal, natural gas and uranium (for nuclear energy), you need oil to extract the minerals used for those energy sources.

When oil shortages happen, those nonrenewable energy sources will also experience shortages. This means any place that relies on nonrenewable energy sources for electricity will have black outs or electricity shortages because there isn't enough oil to extract those nonrenewable energy sources for electricity. If you live in an area where the electricity is from renewable sources, then you don't need to worry about electricity shortages of black outs when oil shortages happen. However, since the majority of the USA's electricity comes from nonrenewable sources, when oil shortages happen, then there will also be wide spread blackouts or electricity shortages.

Just because you will still have electricity when oil shortages happen isn't going to be enough for you to survive the collapse of industrial civilization. Oil is still used to produce and distribute food across the globe, so you need to learn how to grow food without fossil fuels to survive the demise of our civilization. You can live without electricity, but you can't live without food.

Oil shortages will also lead to widespread electricity shortages or black outs because most of the electricity on this planet is indirectly generated by oil (because oil is required for the extraction of the minerals used to produce electricity, such as coal, natural gas and uranium). When permanent blackouts happen, you will lose access to all electronic communications including the Internet. You better prepare for permanent black outs when oil shortages happen if you live in an area that depends on nonrenewable energy sources for electricity.

Basically, I want to know if there is going to be black outs in the area I live when oil shortages happen. That's all.

[NorseMariner]

I am not sure about Kitchener specifically, however, I would guess most of your electricity comes from nuclear, with hydro and natural gas providing the rest. Most of our nuclear power is produced in Pickering and the Bruce Peninsula. While most of our hydro probably comes from the Niagara region and Northern Ontario.

http://www.ieso.ca/Pages/Power-Data/Supply.aspx

I am fortunate enough to live in an area of Northern Ontario that gets most of its electricity from hydropower.

[Newfie]

You don't, it's a fungible resource.

It comes from the grid, the grid Is everywhere.

All hail the GRID!

Seriously though, if you want to know, then start here...

http://www.nerc.com/Pages/default.aspx

[sparky]

.
The grid in Ontario belong and is supplied by your provincial government
the High voltage grid , the backbone of the distribution is Hydro one ( networks )
http://www.hydroone.com/Pages/default.aspx
there is private competition for the consumer distribution with Hydro one the main supplier
the generating Authority is the Ontario Power Generation with 50% of the demand capacity
http://www.opg.com/Pages/home.aspx
it must provide power to the province at a cheaper rate than available from other sources
OGP production come from a variety of sources
nuclear, hydroelectric, wind, solar and fossil fuel.
Although Ontario has an open electricity market, the provincial government regulate the price the company receives for its electricity to be less than the market average, in an attempt to stabilize prices. Since 1 April 2008, the company's rates have been regulated by the Ontario Energy Board.

OPG power stations — capacity and output (2012)
Source Stations Capacity (MW) 2012 output (TWh)
Nuclear 2 6,606 49.0
Hydroelectric 65 6,996 39.6
Thermal 5 5,447 4.1
Total 72 19,049 83.7

there is some biomass due to the numerous forestry industry ,some solar and windmill a as a sop to the greenly minded
compared to other advanced states there is a LOT of Hydro and a very small proportion of coal

here for a full list , including the privately owned
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ge ... in_Ontario

[GHung]

DesuMaiden: "....because if your area's electricity comes from renewable sources (such as wind, solar or hydroelectric), then you don't need to worry about the black outs that will accompany oil shortages. Nonrenewable energy sources don't require oil for maintenance."

Not sure how you came to that conclusion. Virtually everything at scale in the industrial age requires oil. Maintaining and operating power grids and power plants requires a lot of petroleum products. As for your key question, the only way to know for sure where your electricity comes from is to grow your own, or be on an isolated grid like Kodiak, Alaska.

[ROCKMAN]

Some details: "The area’s electricity demand is a mix of residential, commercial and industrial loads, and includes diverse economic activities such as major educational institutions and automobile manufacturing. As a result of population growth and strong economic activity, the demand for electricity in the area is expected to grow substantially over the next 20 years. Much of the existing electricity infrastructure in the area is reaching capacity. As a result, integrated options for future energy conservation, distributed generation, and electricity infrastructure expansion and investment need to be developed."

Here's an interactive site that will give you all the specifics about sources and your grid:

http://www.ieso.ca/ontarioenergymap/index.html

[Synapsid]

DM,

The company mails that information out to users.

[Outcast_Searcher]

Here's an interactive site that will give you all the specifics about sources and your grid:

http://www.ieso.ca/ontarioenergymap/index.html

Neat site Rockman.

From the description it gives, it sure sounds like there is little if any oil as a component of Ontario's electricity production.

At the risk of stating the obvious, very little of the US electricity generation is from oil, overall. I thought I remembered a figure around 1%. My first hit from a Google search on this got me an EIA document which confirmed this for the US. http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=427&t=3

(I'm assuming the US and Quebec might have similar proportions -- might be a bad assumption). Looking for Canadian sources I found this for 2005. It looks like Quebec uses very little oil or "other" besides the traditional sources like coal, hydro, natural gas, etc, unless something has changed very radically).
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/11-621-m/2 ... 62-eng.htm

So given that, and that oil wasn't mentioned as a source for Ontario, I think DeseMaiden has little to worry about there. (For me, I am concerned about general reliability and breakdown of government accountability as redistributing wealth and "fairness" becomes a larger role for government than actually dealing competently with real crises where citizens need government help -- like Katrina as a prime example. That's why I bought a whole-house NG powered generator. The last time we had a major ice storm with big shutdown's, my house (my parents' at the time) was without power for OVER TWO WEEKS in freezing temperatures. And the house is WELL within the city limits in a typical suburb). It's not cheap, but it's a relatively reliable solution. I'm hoping Toyota's Fuel Cell vehicles are another potential solution in a decade or so (if prices fall another $30K+ in today's dollars, and of course a reasonable hydrogen supply build-out occurs. Notice I said "hoping" instead of "expecting").

[KaiserJeep]

I don't think people are understanding the nature of the power grid. All the producing power sources - including Hoover Dam, numerous coal plants, numerous nuke plants, and everybody's rooftop solar - these are all online and in sync at once. All of the users and consumers are also online simultaneously. The mix of energy production is about 78% fossil fuels and 22% other. All of the consumers share the 78/22 mix - or whatever the exact figure is for the moment.

In a future where the 78% fossil fuel plants are offline, so are 78% of the users. Those 22% of the users that would be left connected are hospitals, government offices, and emergency services. All the individual consumers are offline. City buildings are uninhabitable without power. Suburban homes are basicly the same - fireplaces work, candles work, and barbeques work.

Those Americans lucky enough to have installed an alternative power plant - be it a propane generator or solar PV plus batteries - have that minimal power for however long the fuel lasts. Then those houses too become uninhabitable. That means rich people with good fences and armed guards have power - and everybody else is in a local shelter, be it a high school gym or the SuperDome stadium.

The power is never on again once the grid goes down, with the 78% of power sources offline. No warning, no second chances, no TV, no Internet, no electric lights, no mobile telephones, nothing ever again. Unless you plan for it and make your own provisions, no electricity ever again. If there are a few houses lit up and one is yours, you look outside your fence and note thousands of shivering hungry people leaning on your fence, which is already falling down.

Get the picture? Shivering in the dark after the firewood is gone. Your wood pile disappears in the first week, because your neighbors were less responsible than you. Your woodlot is a forest of bare stumps the second week. The third week, those outbuildings you cannot guard 24X7 also disappear. A pall of dirty fireplace smoke hangs everywhere. When it clears, there is no fuel left for space heat or cooking. Cold canned food, dried food, etc. until that too is gone. Then they will come to eat you and your family.

[kublikhan]

I don't think people are understanding the nature of the power grid. All the producing power sources - including Hoover Dam, numerous coal plants, numerous nuke plants, and everybody's rooftop solar - these are all online and in sync at once. All of the users and consumers are also online simultaneously. The mix of energy production is about 78% fossil fuels and 22% other. All of the consumers share the 78/22 mix - or whatever the exact figure is for the moment.

This is not quite right. The US electric grid is more of a patchwork system with most electricity is consumed locally and long distance transmission capacity is increasingly congested. There really are regional variations in peoples electricity sources.

Policy makers and energy analysts agree: America's electric grid is inadequate to service our twenty-first century power needs. Despite this consensus, formidable obstacles stand in the way of a national transmission grid capable of delivering power over long distances and across state lines.

No one would deny the critical importance to this country of its interstate oil and natural gas pipelines. But unlike its modern incarnation, whose rates and siting a New Deal law placed under the exclusive jurisdiction of the predecessor agency to FERC, its electrical counterpart confronts a myriad of political and regulatory hurdles. They range from local NIMBY opposition to a fragmented and inefficient skein of state and regional regulatory entities that oversee the siting and financing of new power lines. Add in the vagaries of the tax code, and the challenge becomes even more formidable.

Throughout most of the twentieth century, power plants were built to serve their own localized grids corresponding to the footprint of the local utility.

In the 1990s, restructuring and deregulation encouraged the sale of power across state lines. Utilities split themselves into transmission companies and generation companies. Because their rates, unlike those of generation companies, were still strictly regulated by state authorities, which were often strongly pro-consumer, transmission companies chose not to invest in the upkeep and upgrade of their wires, knowing that they would not be compensated for doing so. That is one reason that "electrical generation is growing four times faster than transmission, according to federal figures."

The current limitations of the grid are apparent: built to transmit and distribute power a relatively short distance, from source to nearby user, existing systems are simply too modest to handle the large amounts of power needed to travel long distances—say, from West Virginia to the East Coast, as American Electric Power (AEP) and Allegheny Energy, Inc. would like their proposed Potomac-Appalachian Transmission Highline, a 275-mile, 765 kV project, to do.

The present balkanized system of electricity distribution, with regulatory authority vested in fifty state capitals, by its very nature impedes the development of a high-voltage backbone transmission system that spans the nation. If a line were proposed that traversed a state without offloading power, that state's officials would see little reason to favor its construction. As such, "Some state siting laws require that the benefits of a proposed transmission facility accrue to the individual state, resulting in the rejection of transmission proposals that benefit an entire region, rather than a single state." Such parochialism can delay and even doom urgently needed transmission projects that are broadly regional or national in scope.

More recently, regulatory barriers caused Southern California Edison (SCE) to walk away from plans that it had made to build a 230-mile power line from California to Arizona. The project was approved by the California Public Utilities Commission but was rejected by the Arizona Corporation Commission. In addition to these approvals, transmission-line expansion projects are drawing increasing resistance from citizen and environmental groups. For instance, in upstate New York, a private investment group called New York Regional Interconnect, Inc. has been trying for years to build some 200 miles of transmission lines that would carry electricity from the northern part of the state to customers farther south. But the line is opposed by local groups that don't want the lines to cross over their communities.

Regulatory Barriers to a National Electricity Grid

[yellowcanoe]

Here's an interactive site that will give you all the specifics about sources and your grid:

http://www.ieso.ca/ontarioenergymap/index.html

Neat site Rockman.

From the description it gives, it sure sounds like there is little if any oil as a component of Ontario's electricity production.

It has been decades since oil was used to generate electricity in Ontario. Coal generation was phased out about a year ago. In 2013 around 59% of the power generated in Ontario came from nuclear.

Quebec has such a large amount of hydro electric power that they don't need to burn fossil fuels. They have also been installing wind generators which work very well in combination with their hydro electric power.

[Apneaman]

Maintenance requires fossil fuels. Maintenance requires a certain level of economy to support it. There are people working 24/7 to keep the grid running. The other big issue is lack of maintenance and upgrading over the last 40 years. This has been highly neglected in the US since deregulation. I read somewhere (I forget) that the US grid is the most complicated machine on the planet. Complexity is expensive. Blacks outs are becoming more frequent in many countries.

Aging US Power Grid Blacks Out More Than Any Other Developed Nation

http://www.ibtimes.com/aging-us-power-g ... on-1631086

U.S. Electrical Grid on the Edge of Failure
Network analysis suggests geography makes the grid inherently unstable

http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... n-failure/

[Recent history]
Detroit power failure raises alarms across the country

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nati ... /19801935/

Peak Energy & Resources, Climate Change, and the Preservation of Knowledge Collapse or Extinction? (bunch of articles)

http://energyskeptic.com/?s=grid

[KaiserJeep]

KK, you are attempting to explain electricity to someone who has been practicing Electrical Engineering since 1978.

I see nobody understood my point. The North American power grid looks like this:

Each color represents an area where power production and consumption are more or less balanced. Although these areas are interconnected with large capacity power feeds, they are intended to be self-sufficient. Two exceptions to this exist.

Firstly the Texas interconnection (ERCOT) is the one with extra generating capacity, mainly due to local favorable legislation. In the event that another interconnect needs to purchase power, they want to supply it. Texas has more installed alternate energy capacity than any other area, but still generates most of it's energy from fossil fuels.

Secondly one area of several interconnects is less resilient due to population density. This oldest interconnect is on the Eastern side, where administration and control of several regional interconnects are centralized (the red colored area):


Four large power networks in North America run with synchronous transmission systems operated at 60 cycles per second. Three of the synchronous networks (illustration) are interconnections of many utilities; the fourth, Quebec, connects to only Hydro Quebec. Other smaller networks exist in Alaska, Hawaii, Mexico, Puerto Rico and elsewhere. In the white areas of the first illustration, there is no electricity unless you make it yourself.

Any serious disruption of generating capacity trips the system interconnect circuit breakers. Each area must generate 82% or more of the energy it consumes, more or less. None of the regional interconnects can supply more than about 18% of the base load from another area. Any attempt to do so causes a service disruption over a wide area, which has actually caused days-long power failures in the red area, mainly along the most densely populated Atlantic coast.

This is what we have now. It is NOT the proposed "Supergrid", nor the "Smart Grid", and especially not the high capacity DC high voltage grid powered by alternative energy sources such as photoelectric roads. There are no plans to make it such, only unfunded hopes.

Quebec can meaningfully discuss renewable energy sources, because they are relatively isolated and much of the electricity does come from hydropower. The other three areas are 78% fossil fuels and 18% renewables, no matter where the energy is consumed. Presently, these three areas cannot remain online without more than three quarters of their power produced by fossil energy.

[Outcast_Searcher]

In a future where the 78% fossil fuel plants are offline, so are 78% of the users. Those 22% of the users that would be left connected are hospitals, government offices, and emergency services. All the individual consumers are offline. City buildings are uninhabitable without power. Suburban homes are basicly the same - fireplaces work, candles work, and barbeques work.

Seriously? With respect, what reasonable scenario in the next 50 years has ALL fossil fuels becoming unavailable? For example, liquids can be produced from NG and Coal if necessary. Supposedly (though dirty), the US has hundreds of years of coal left. (And I'll bet if the choice comes to freezing and starving vs. upsetting the greens, that political choices re burning coal will suddenly change toward coal by a LOT).

So are you saying this is a possible future in 200 years, or are you saying this is, say, likely in the next 25 years? IMO, no one but the die-hard ignore-all-data-to-the-contrary doomers think there will be NO access to hydrocarbons within the next 25 years.

I like to use science and actual data. The EIA says we will still be using roughly the proportion of hydrocarbons we use today in 2040. http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/pdf/0383(2014).pdf

[kublikhan]

Ok KJ this is your domain so let me ask you this. Over here in Illinois, we get about half of our electricity from nuclear. Yet you said the eastern interconnect as a whole must be 75% or greater fossil fuels. Doesn't this just mean that other regions in the eastern interconnect are dragging down the nuclear numbers as a whole and Illinois can still be nearly 50% nuclear? IE, still alot of regional variety in power profiles?

Another question: you said each region must generation 82% or more of it's own power. Does this rule apply within each region as well? For example, does Illinois have to generate 82% of it's own power? Does Indiana? Or can Illinois export enough power to power say a third of Indiana?

[Newfie]

Kube,

I think KJ is right in this one. Think of an inter connect as one huge swimming pool, there are a bunch of garden hoses pouring water into it, one from a dam, one from a lake, one from a well. It's hot, the water evaporates and people splash water out. In general it is in balance, neither flooding or drying out.

You may hang around the hose from the well, enjoying the local variability and essence, but you are still floating in the overall pool, with water contributed from all sources.

And yes, I too am a licensed Professional Electrical Engineer. (Although this bit ain't my thing!)

[KaiserJeep]

Pretty good analogy, Newfie. KK, the statement "Over here in Illinois, we get about half of our electricity from nuclear." is actually nonsense. What you mean is that about half the power (48.7%) generated in the state of Illinois is from Nuclear energy. The other half (47.1%) is coal. Natural gas (2.2%) and Wind (1.4%) make up the remainder.

You DON'T consume that same power in the state, you put it on the Eastern power interconnect (the red area in the second image in my message). All of the power you consume also comes from that same interconnect, so 78% of the energy you consume comes from fossil fuels.

The 18% figure is not a "rule". That is the capacity of the high capacity feed lines between regions, which average about 18% of the peak of the grid capacity. Actually Texas has more capacity and the red Eastern interconnect rather less. The exact figures vary up and down, depending upon time of day and time of year and the location. Six of the ten regional interconnects are in the red "Eastern" region, the other four are independent, operated separately, and outside of that area.

It is amusing to note that some places in New England (New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, etc.) like to pride themselves on the percentage of "green" power they "use". While one can produce green energy and put it on the grid, everybody actually uses the same mix of 78% fossil and 22% other sources. Even if you produce more "green" power than you need, everybody uses the same mix within a colored grid area.

Generally speaking, population centers tend to have more redundancies in power feeds, and less risk of an outage than in rural areas. Almost all power outages are grid failures - the power plants themselves are extremely reliable, the power distribution network is not.

Illinois cannot be operated separately from the Eastern interconnect, you are dependent upon all the US states and Canadian provinces in the entire red area making the correct decisions about power plants and grid infrastructure and especially grid maintenance, and grid operations, or you simply will not have power. There is only a limited capacity to run segments of any area independently.

Inconveniently the interconnects sprawl across both state and national borders. But that is the nature of the beast, your local political leadership and your local mix of generating sources are pretty irrelevant.

The risk of power grid unavailability are highest throughout the red area, slightly better in the yellow, and considerably better in the green and violet areas. Within any area, they are approximately the same.

[kublikhan]

Thanks for the clarification KJ.

[Apneaman]

Outcast_Searcher

"I like to use science and actual data." Really? The EIA? Is that the same EIA that was off by 96% on the Monterey shale play last year? I like to use science and data too, but it depends on who the data is coming from. I don't do industry cheerleaders. Almost every government department related to industry/economics is corrupted, captured and/or is suffering from a dangerous case of group think. They always assume a best case scenario based on a world that has changed dramatically. America and the world will start to lose hydro power within 10 years or less. Hoover dam for starters.

EIA Cuts Recoverable California Shale Estimates By 96%

http://www.businessinsider.com/eia-mont ... ale-2014-5

Lake Meade is currently at 331.92m(1088.97 ft).
Lake Mead is full at 372m(1220.47 ft) above sea level.
At 320m(1049.87 ft) hydropower generation is threatened.
The last water intake for Las Vegas runs dry at 305m(1000.66 ft).
At 273m(895.67 ft) water stops flowing out. H/T xraymike

Lake Mead Water Levels — Historical and Current

http://www.arachnoid.com/NaturalResources/

http://lakemead.water-data.com/

[Newfie]

Not to disagree with myself (or KJ) here but there is one point, a small one, to be made.

IIRC the major increase in generation capacity over the last few decades has been in "point source" plants. These are small capacity plants, turbines running on natural gas or jet fuel (AKA kerosene).These plants are not as efficient as big base load plants but do have some advantages. They are placed close to the load, this can be a intermittent load, such as a seasonal resort community or a plant that has a variable need. Second, being small, they are much easier to permit and build. Far less public opposition especially because they benefit the residents locally where they are being built.

On the other hand as they run on natural gas or kerosene, a product of oil, so they can be said to run on oil.

This is probably what constitutes the small portion of electricity generated by oil in the above quoted stats.

Early on in this thread I pointed to the site for the North American Electric Relibility Council where much good info can be found. IMHO it's periodic reliability reports have gone down hill considerably but are still a good read for basic understanding, even if they don't realy address the threats on the system.