Ward 13 · Rideau-Rockcliffe · Accountability Brief
Peter Karwacki · September 2, 2026
#482 They Ordered the Buses. They Forgot the Chargers.
Council heard 1,075 megawatts and answered with a planning framework for 2027. That is not gravity. That is delay with letterhead.
Ottawa already knows this pattern. The city ordered electric buses and then discovered the hard part was not the purchase order. It was the garages, the transformers, the software, and the depot power. The fleet target ran ahead of the chargers. In June, a software fault at St. Laurent left 133 electric buses undercharged overnight. Riders got a scramble. Council got another “we will review our contingencies.”
The large-load queue is the same move at city scale. And it is worse.
A Saturday scramble is not a grid event
In June, Hydro Ottawa’s CEO told council the truth in plain numbers. Thirty-four large-load projects. 1,075 megawatts. Eighty-six percent of last year’s average system load. About 60 percent data centres. Another 17 percent public institutions, including national defence. Four out of five want to hook up within two years. He said the utility is being asked to build, in two or three years, what took 110 years.
Council lauded the utility. Someone asked about short household outages. Then the room moved on. That is the tell. They heard a reliability complaint from a living room and missed a load class that can leave the system by the gigawatt when a line blinks.
Last month a U.S. grid operator watched about 3,800 megawatts of data-centre load transfer to on-site generation after a cleared 230 kV fault in northern Virginia. The fault was normal. The load was not. Visibility, measurement, ramping, ride-through — those four words are the standard of care in 2026. FERC told NERC to write enforceable computational-load rules by December 31. Ontario’s IESO posted technical requirements in May and is amending them now. Hydro Ottawa already filed comments.
Ottawa’s shareholder did not put four words on the record. It put a dividend on the calendar.
The shareholder cashes one bill. Households pay the other.
Council is the sole shareholder of Hydro Ottawa. This year the dividend is $22.1 million. Useful money. Also a conflict if nobody asks the only sentence that belongs at that table:
Who pays for the studies, the wires, and the backup capacity if a campus is interruptible in practice and firm on the invoice?
Households already ate a distribution increase the Ontario Energy Board cut back on affordability grounds. Hydro Ottawa wanted more. The regulator said 16 percent in one year was not just and reasonable. The rest of the five-year ask is still coming back, year by year. Growth is the justification. Growth without an allocation rule is a cost-shift with better branding.
What council did instead
In August, council unanimously passed a motion to write a data-centre assessment framework and bring it back in 2027. Staff will flag hyperscale applications over 50 megawatts. Councillors may then consider an interim control bylaw. The mover said the motion was not anti-data-centre. Correct. It was also not a connection standard.
Zoning is not ride-through. An environmental checklist is not a ramp limit. A heads-up on a site plan is not a public queue. A framework next year is how you order the buses and hope the chargers arrive.
One councillor moved the planning file. That is more than silence. It is still the wrong instrument for the risk. Land use decides where a building sits. It does not decide whether the hall stays on through a voltage dip, or whether Overbrook pays for the study that says it can.
Ward 13’s voice on the file
Councillor King sits on Finance and Corporate Services and on Environment and Climate Change — the two committees closest to the utility, the rate file, and the climate-energy overlap. His office can produce a Hydro webinar on derecho recovery, a newsletter on outage restoration, and a full calendar of events. Capital Pride made the channels. The 1,075 megawatt queue did not.
Events are not oversight. Attendance is not a connection standard. A capacity-plan bullet in a ward letter is not a position on cost-shift. If there is a committee question on IESO computational-load rules as they apply to Hydro Ottawa’s distribution connections, put it on the table. If there is a public sentence on who pays, produce it. Until then, mute is the record.
Gravity, in four lines
Before the next large computational load is approved for connection in this city:
- Publish the queue. Every large load above a stated threshold: megawatts, location class, status. National-defence sites can be described without a street address.
- Confirm the rules apply here. IESO computational-load requirements — models, forecasts, ramp behaviour, ride-through — bind distribution-connected halls in Ottawa, not only transmission-connected ones.
- Write the allocation rule. Study costs and network upgrades for these loads do not default to the residential class.
- One sentence from the shareholder. Does council connect first and write rules later, or the other way around? “The IESO will handle it” is only an answer with dates attached. “We do not know yet” is also a record. Silence is not a third option.
A bus that will not start ruins a morning. A load that vanishes in the same millisecond as its neighbours is how a “small” fault becomes a city problem. Council owns the utility. Ward 13 lives on the same winter peak and the same bill. The juice is only worth the squeeze if someone is honest about the squeeze.
I read staff reports for a living. This file is not mysterious. It is unanswered.
This time around, inform yourselves. Vote differently. Vote wisely.
Vote Peter Karwacki for Rideau-Rockcliffe.
peterkarwacki.blogspot.com
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Ward 13 · Rideau-Rockcliffe · Accountability Brief
Peter Karwacki · Ward 13 · September 2, 2026
Nobody in this race is talking about this. Not the incumbent. Not the local coverage of Ward 13. The queue is already large enough to nearly double Ottawa’s draw, and the connection rules are being written while council treats Hydro Ottawa’s annual report as a dividend photo.
Last week a U.S. grid operator put it in writing: large computer loads do not get a hookup until they can be seen, measured, ramped, and held on the system through a disturbance. That is not anti-data-centre. It is what you do when a load can vanish by the gigawatt because a line fault blinked.
Four conditions, in English
Visibility. Tell the operator what the facility is and how it will behave tomorrow and in real time. You cannot plan a grid you cannot see.
Phasor measurement. Put high-resolution, time-synced meters on the site so a trip is a dataset, not a surprise.
Ramping. Do not let a campus jump tens of megawatts in seconds during ordinary operation. A 200 MW hall that slams on is a supply-demand problem, not a billing problem.
Ride-through. Stay connected through a normal voltage or frequency dip. If every hall cuts to diesel at the same millisecond, the “small” fault becomes a city problem.
Those four words — visibility, measurement, ramping, ride-through — are the standard of care in 2026. PJM just watched about 3,800 MW of data-centre load drop in northern Virginia after a 230 kV fault. NERC has already documented earlier events near 1,500 MW. FERC has ordered enforceable computational-load standards by December 31, 2026. Texas already has ride-through rules in force. Ontario’s IESO published technical requirements in May and is running stakeholder amendments this month. Hydro Ottawa has already filed comments.
MISO’s rules do not bind Hunt Club Road. They tell you what “connect first, write rules later” looks like from the other side of a blackout.
What Ottawa has instead
Thirty-four large-load projects in the Hydro Ottawa queue. 1,075 MW. 86 percent of last year’s average system load. About 60 percent of that ask is data centres; another 17 percent is public institutions. CEO Bryce Conrad told council in June this is a century of growth being requested in two or three years. He also said the requestors are not Amazon, Microsoft, or Meta — smaller firms, some in generative AI, plus government demand including national defence.
None of the 34 sites are named in public. There is no resident-facing day-ahead forecast. There is no public ride-through standard attached to the local queue. There is a rate case, and there is a dividend. Households will pay one. Council cashes the other.
Cost-shift is the sentence that belongs at the council table. Who pays for the studies, the wires, and the backup capacity if a campus is interruptible in practice and firm on the invoice? Council is the sole shareholder of Hydro Ottawa. That is a shareholder question. It is also a Ward 13 question. This ward lives with the same grid, the same winter peak, and the same bill.
The silence
Councillor King sits on Finance and Corporate Services and on Environment and Climate Change — the two committees closest to the utility, the rate file, and the climate-energy overlap. I could find no newsletter item, public statement, or social post from him on the 1,075 MW queue, the Hydro Ottawa rate case, IESO computational-load rules, or ride-through. Capital Pride made the channels. The meter did not.
Events are not oversight. Attendance is not a connection standard.
What I would put on the record
Before the next large computational load is approved for connection in this city:
- A public list of queued large loads above a stated threshold, with MW, location class, and status. National-defence sites can be described without a street address.
- Confirmation that IESO computational-load requirements — models, forecasts, ramp behaviour, ride-through — apply to distribution-connected halls in Ottawa, not only to transmission-connected ones.
- A written allocation rule: study costs and network upgrades for these loads do not default to the residential class.
- One public sentence from the shareholder — council — on whether Hydro Ottawa will connect first and write rules later, or the other way around.
If the answer is “the IESO will handle it,” say that on the record and attach the dates. If the answer is “we do not know yet,” that is also a record. Silence is not a third option when the queue is already 86 percent of the city’s average load.
I read staff reports for a living. This file is not mysterious. It is unanswered.
This time around, inform yourselves. Vote differently. Vote wisely.
Vote Peter Karwacki for Rideau-Rockcliffe.
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