Questions regarding Hydro Ottawa and grid resilience

Newsletter: October 27, 2023

At city council this week, we received the annual general report from Hydro Ottawa.  I had a number of questions for them regarding ‘fair weather outages’, the Hydro Ottawa posture for ice storm outages, preparing our electric grid for additional electrification pressures.  See our exchange here.  I will be actively engaged on issues of our hydro grid and next week I will be attending the Association of Municipalities for Ontario Energy conference in preparation for my representation in the coming months, specifically at environment committee.  I have significant concerns that our energy policies are too ambitious, too ideological, and that there are very practical and real policy actions that are required in order to best posture our city to be resilient to extreme weather events. We need to be mindful regarding the increasing pressures on our hydro system based on the anticipated increase in electric vehicles and electric heating sources.