Toronto Hydro is battling to renew an aging system at the same time as gears up to serve unprecedented high-rise growth, says chief executive Anthony Haines.

The utility still struggles to provide reliable service in some areas, Haines acknowledged in a speech to the Ontario Energy Network Thursday.

“Our friends at Sunnybrook (Hospital) have had 23 outages this year,” he said.

In an interview, Haines said that the outages were made of up 13 outright interruptions, plus another 10 incidents when the quality of power “sagged.”

Hospital equipment is especially sensitive to even momentary interruptions, he said: “One sixtieth of a second takes an MRI machine down.”

Power interruptions cause delays as equipment has to be shut down and re-booted, he said.

The solution for Sunnybrook’s problem is a new power line into the hospital, he said, but it’s still awaiting approval from the Ontario Energy Board.

Toronto Hydro has had a running battle with the energy board for several years. The company has pushed an aggressive capital spending program of $400 to $450 million a year, while the board has reined back some proposed projects to keep rates in check.

Currently approved plans have boosted customer bills by a little less than $3 a month for a typical household. At one point, Toronto Hydro had sought $5 a month.

Haines said money is needed to provide better service than what places like Sunnybrook have been getting.

“It’s terrible performance, we’d like it to be much better, but it’s certainly not the only problem we have around town,’ he said. “This aging infrastructure is going to occupy a lot of our efforts over the next decade or so.”

Reliability will be especially important as Toronto hosts the 2015 Pan Am Games, Haines said.

No one wants an incident like the 2013 Super Bowl blackout that held up play for half an hour – especially if it were to happen in the middle of the 100-metre finals.

While the city-owned company plays catch-up with old equipment, Haines said it’s trying to service a flood of new development.

Toronto had 99 high rise buildings (100 metres or more) in 2007, Haines said. It now has 157, with another 112 in the pipeline due by 2016.

“That is more growth than any other city in the world,” he said, and the company has to provide them with power, while transit projects and large-scale waterfront development also clamour for service.

Toronto Hydro hasn’t been without its critics. It faced opposition before the energy board for its plans to build a $184 million transformer station near the Rogers Centre.

Opponents argued that more aggressive conservation programs, coupled with small-scale downtown generation projects, could head off the need for the big transformer station.

In that case, the board sided with Toronto Hydro, which said the business core risked a massive blackout if the station wasn’t built. It’s now under construction.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

While new developments are being added to the system, Haines said conservation and other programs are keeping over-all power consumption flat.

In 2005, the city needed 5,000 megawatts of power on scorching summer days, he said. Last summer, the peak was 4,700 megawatts.

Measured in megawatt hours, Toronto’s power use in the three months ended Sept. 30 was 3.7 per cent lower than in the same period a year earlier.