A woman checks her car in flood water on Lakeshore West during a storm in Toronto on Monday, July 8, 2013.Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press
After massive power outages caused by Monday night's flooding in Toronto, energy experts are questioning whether it's time Ontario revisits the design of its energy infrastructure to better withstand extreme weather conditions.
"As we saw a few weeks ago in Calgary, these phenomenons are happening more and more because of environmental changes," said Reza Iravani, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Toronto, referring to mass flooding in Alberta.
"If this trend continues, that means either the design has to be changed, or the existing infrastructure modified to deal with such cases."
Mr. Iravani pointed to heavy rainfall that left the Don Valley Parkway under water a few months ago in Toronto, as an example of how extreme weather appears to be happening more frequently, and why rethinking our infrastructure – right down to the weatherproofing design of transmissions stations, might be necessary.
The source of Monday's outages, which left as many as 500,000 households in the dark across the GTA, are two Hydro One transmission stations located on the city's west-end, which saw extensive flood damage from Monday's record rainfall. One of those stations had more than 300,000 gallons of water rush through it, according to Hydro One, damaging some of the equipment inside.
As of Wednesday morning, as many as 16,000 households across the GTA were still without power.
Mike Penstone, Hydro One's vice-president of network development and regional planning, said that the damaged equipment at Richview and Manby stations is housed inside of buildings "designed to withstand normal amounts of precipitations, wind loads and weather conditions." He said that once power is restored, the utility will look at examining why the building flooded, and how it can prevent the same thing from happening again.
"This is a concern for utilities right across North America," Mr. Penstone said. "From Hurricane Sandy to some very odd weather in the U.S – states that are normally warmer experiencing some colder temperatures – the industry as a whole is monitoring how weather is changing, and more importantly, what we should be doing to be able to withstand more extreme weather conditions."
Any changes would have to be balanced with cost to consumers, and with consideration to other concerns, like population growth and increasingly dense urban areas, Mr. Iravani said.
"We're dealing with hundreds of millions of dollars, so it has to happen over a long period of time, considering all the things that are going to happen in the next 20, 30 years," Mr. Iravani said.
Jennifer Link, a spokesperson for Toronto Hydro, said that Monday night's storm was unprecedented, and that the city's energy system has held up fine to rain in the past. "I don't know if there would be a system that could withstand something like that," she said of the 126 millimetres that fell in a span of just two hours.
Still, she said, Toronto Hydro has changed the design of its equipment over the years to adapt to evolving situations and demands. She pointed to Forest Hill, where much of the electrical equipment was built in backyards of homes in the 1950s to make neighbourhoods more aesthetically pleasing. In recent years, she said, that infrastructure was moved back to the front, to avoid problems hydro workers were having accessing peoples' backyards.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Energy referred specific questions about Manby and Richview stations back to Hydro One, but said in a statement that "after every major event, our energy agencies conduct a review to determine how our energy infrastructure performed, and how personnel responded. This is an opportunity to determine causes, learn what worked, and ensure we can deliver the best service for families and businesses."