On power and not having any

Before the winter began for real (well, it hasn't really ever begun, but let's say snow means winter)- yes, before winter came, we received a flyer from the city of St. John's' electricity provider: what to do in case of a power outage.

This winter readiness update, as they called it, explained how the company has everything in place now to tackle the island's challenging winter conditions.

The Outage Safety Checklist has been attached to our fridge door since then, without me really looking at it.

I had expected the power to go (if it was to go at all) on a stormy night with tons of snow and blizzard conditions. This morning, sunny, almost without wind, no snow fall and temperatures close to 0, I heard that all the schools in the city were closed due to power outages. Say whaaat?

The NL Hydro says that due to technical problems and an oil leakage they were not able to produce enough electricity for the grid, which is why they had to initiate rolling outages (we cut your power for a bit to save electricity, then we cut from the suburb next to yours, etc). You get the picture. Or?

A bit of background information is necessary. Last winter was tough in Eastern Newfoundland and it was tougher for the electricity grid. Starting with rolling blackouts, the whole grid went out on Jan 4 2014, and with a hashtag of its own, #darknl, the province stayed in the dark for days. For our street the outage was apparently 7 days long. Difficult to imagine, isn't it, unless you're living in a developing country? They say that the electricity provider's generating capacity is generally low.

Until now, the blackouts I've experienced in Europe have been caused by flooded basements, falling trees or lightnings striking in the wrong places. Power outages caused by too much use and too little production tell me that there's quite a lot of work here in the province in terms of, not necessarily electricity production, but limiting electricity consumption. 

The NL households use third most electricity in Canada (after Prince Edward Island and Alberta), with an average of 111 gigajoules per household (you can check out the stats from Statistics Canada here: http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/11-526-s/2013002/t004-eng.htm.)

The power in our house didn't really go out today, so I can only imagine what a fun day this school-free day with nice weather has been for all the kids that got an unplanned-for day off. Poor parents, is all I can say. 

I have had another look at the power outage checklist, though, and we now have a small reserve of potable water in our basement.