Des Sullivan (no relation as far as I know) has posted over at his Uncle Gnarley blog an article calling on the PUB to refuse NL Hydro's request for a rate increase to cover the increased cost of providing service to the ratepayers. This increase is, according to Hydro, due to increased use of the island's thermal generation which is needed to offset reduced hydro output which is due to reduced reservoir levels across the island.
Reservoir levels are down due to low inflows from rain and snow. According to Hydro anyway.
I'm just going to comment on the data provided, as Mr Sullivan is entitled to his opinions, no matter how much I may disagree with them.
Mr Sullivan starts out with Figure 1 below. This is pretty cool data. I didn't know it was available and you can access it from Environment Canada's website, here.
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| Figure 1 |
The blog then goes on to say:
"The following Real-Time Hydrometric Graph shows precipitation data for the area around the Car (sic) Arm Reservoir, a significant source of hydro power. The time parameters cover a period longer than the one for which Nalcor claims low precipitation. The period shown in the Graph is August 2014 to February 2016. Changes in precip are consistent with last year."
If you take the elevation data and overlay this years data with last years data they are in no way consistent as Mr Sullivan claims. I did this and include my plot here as Figure 2.
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| Figure 2: Year Over Year Comparison |
From Figure 2 it's clear that the reservoir level at Cat Arm has dropped 26 days sooner than last year and was roughly 1.3 meters (4.3 feet) lower than last year as of January 12. The situation has not improved, specifically I looked at the elevation levels on February 1, 2015 (391.6 m) versus February 1, 2016 (390.04 m).
I don't believe you can conclude that the water levels at Cat Arm are consistent, year over year.
The next figure provided by Mr Sullivan showed the East End of Granite Lake, Figure 3. The blog included another Granite Lake level as well which I won't reproduce here, you can see it in the UG blog. Granite Lake has control structures on both ends. It receives water from Victoria Lake, which is the start of the Bay D'Espoir water supply, and then dumps it into Meelpaeg Reservoir, which is the larger storage space in the region. Hydro can manage the level of water in this lake by moving water through it from Victoria Lake and down into Meelpaeg Reservoir.
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| Figure 3 |
That region of the province did have a fair amount of rain recently and you can see the increase in water level that resulted, Figure 3. It's about 0.3 m or 1 foot which is a relatively modest increase. There is a level gauge at Victoria Lake as well. I've reproduced the data as Figure 4. This lake is down 4m (12 feet) since the summer. That's substantial.
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| Figure 4 |
There's a little blip of an increase at the end there. That would likely be as a result of the rainfall and melt in February, 2016, and shown in Figure 3.
As part of another blog post I have been writing which discusses the third line from Bay D'Espoir to the Avalon, I sent a request to Hydro for data on how much water has been spilled on the island over the past 5 years. They were good enough to send it along just today actually. The data shows that Hydro has not spilled water since June of 2015. I don't think they have wasted the water.
Finally, Hydro has indicated in its application to the PUB that Newfoundland Power and Corner Brook P&P are also seeing reduced water levels in their reservoirs. So this not just Hydro's issue. If that's not the case then I expect to see strong objections from both during the PUB process.
I had a few issues with some other items in today's Uncle Gnarley blog but will leave it at that for today.
If you see any problem with what I have hastily prepared here, you can let me know by leaving a comment or sending me a message on Twitter, @kurtbsullivan.
Edit: February 23rd: Thanks to Tom Baird @BairdTom for pointing out an error in my discussion on Figure 1. I had originally posted 392.73 m for February 1, 2015
Edit: February 24, 2016: I cleaned up the discussion on Figure 1 a bit more to make it clearer.
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