Canada’s power grid is under pressure amid rising demand, watchdog warns

A new reliability report warns Canada’s power grid faces growing strain as electricity demand rises faster than new supply, raising concerns about winter reliability.

Canada is facing mounting challenges to keep up with growing demand for electricity, says a report from a North American electricity reliability watchdog, raising concerns that a strained power system may not be able to handle future instances of extreme cold or hot weather.

There are growing risks across the continent, including in several provinces in Canada, according to an assessment published last week by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), a not-for-profit regulatory authority.

“Quebec, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and the Maritimes in Canada are characterized as elevated risk,” said NERC chief executive officer Jim Robb in an interview with Global News.

The finding means the provinces can manage demand for electrical power under under normal conditions, “but if they were faced with an extreme weather event or an extreme set of circumstances that they would not have the same degree of reserves,” Robb said.

Problems with the bulk power system have been infrequent in the last few years, but typically happen during extreme weather, Robb said. He highlighted winter storm Elliott in Dec. 2022 that caused outages across the northeast and mid-Atlantic regions of the United States.

“That area at that time was categorized as normal risk. We have also seen extreme events, particularly summer heat domes, where areas that were characterized as elevated or high risk came through with no issues at all. But they were very close from a risk perspective of having challenges.”

Robb said it’s important to highlight that NERC’s published findings represent a risk analysis, not a prediction of blackouts.

“What it does say is that the continent in general is struggling to keep up with the demand that is anticipated to come onto the grid over the next five to 10 years.”