The Independent Power Producers Society of Alberta (IPPSA) welcomed a report on the July 24 power outage, which confirmed that the restructuring of Alberta's electricity market was not a factor in the event.

Evan Bahry, IPPSA's Executive Director, states, "As the report suggests, the outage was not a function of Alberta's deregulated power market, despite what critics had earlier claimed. In fact the system responded to a series of unforeseeable events, which could have occurred whether the market was regulated or deregulated."

Yesterday, the MSA released its report entitled Events of July 24, 2006, which states, "There is no basis for concluding that a different mechanism for providing generation supply to Albertans would have performed more reliably or economically."

On the outage itself, the MSA states, "Insufficiency of generation was not a root cause of the event. Generation became stranded from the load by transmission problems that ultimately meant load could not be fully met." Furthermore, the MSA states, "In some cases there was clear evidence of extraordinary efforts by plant operators to squeeze out a few extra MWs to help out - a commendable response."

Bahry states, "IPPSA expresses its concern with comments made on the part of critics who tied the July 24 outage to the restructuring of Alberta's power market. Clearly, the outage was not a function of Alberta's market design at all. Quite the contrary, the restructured market has worked very successfully to meet Alberta's considerable growth in power demand."

Since the market opened, Alberta's competitive power producers have added 4000 MW of new supply, or approximately $4 billion worth of new generation investment. Alberta's power supply has grown from 7570 MW in 1996 to 11400 MW in 2006. In other words, non-regulated generation has increased the province's installed capacity by a phenomenal 50% within just ten years. This generation investment has met and exceeded Alberta's considerable growth in power consumption. Demand has grown at nearly 4% per year for over a decade, and this growth rate shows no sign of abating.

For context, the U.S. Energy Information Administration's recent 20-year forecast estimates their country's annual consumption growth at 1.6%. IPPSA was formed in 1993 to serve Alberta's power generators, wholesalers and supporting industries. IPPSA's members represent a majority of Alberta's power supply. IPPSA is active in the market's policy development and regulatory matters.