Last winter, during a cold snap, which is often accompanied by a high-pressure system that becalms the wind, Alberta’s wind farms, with a generating capacity of more than 5,000 megawatts, were producing about five megawatts of wind power -- “almost nothing.”
Barry Penner, a former B.C. Environment minister and current chairman of the Energy Futures Institute, knows this because he was able to go to the Alberta Electric System’s website and pull up a dashboard that shows, in real-time, just how much power is being generated in Alberta, where it’s being generated, from what source, where it is being bought or sold, and for how much per megawatt (MW).
“I’d be curious – how did our wind power operate last year during our cold snap?” Penner wondered. “How is it performing this week? We don’t know.”
The lack of transparency in B.C. with respect to power generation, as well as its cost and its value as a trading commodity, is just one of the concerns being raised in the wake of news the B.C. governments is fast-tracking 10 renewable energy projects in B.C., nine of them wind farms.
These projects are being exempted from BC Environmental Assessment review, with permitting and oversight for them to be placed under the BC Energy Regulator (BCER), which will act as a “one window” regulator.
After issuing a power call last year, BC Hydro accepted nine wind projects and one solar power project, which represent a total investment of $5 billion to $6 billion, the B.C. government said at a press conference today.
The private sector -- independent power producers -- will provide the investment capital to build the projects, with the money and profits to be recovered through 30-year electricity purchase agreements with BC Hydro.
The current power call is unique in that, in all cases, First Nations have equity stakes in the wind projects.
In total, they will have a nameplate capacity of 5,000 gigawatt hours, which is close to the nameplate capacity of Site C dam – the big difference being that intermittent wind and solar power actually produce a fraction of their nameplate capacity compared to firm, dispatchable power from sources like hydro-electric dams, and thermal power plants.
The wind and solar projects are being fast-tracked because there is “an urgent need” for new power generation, according to Environment and Climate Change Minister Adrian Dix.
But if B.C. is in urgent need of more power generation, it begs the question why two thermal power plants – one in Williams Lake and one in Campbell River – are facing imminent closure.
In the case of Williams Lake, the Atlantic Power project, which produces about 66 MW of power from wood waste, faces closure because the company says the rate it gets from BC Hydro isn’t enough to make the economics work, especially in light of a shortage of wood waste.
In Campbell River, the Island Power plant, which can produce 275 MW of firm power from natural gas, is also facing closure in 2026, when its electricity purchase agreement with BC Hydro expires.
“Right now, the government’s plan is to decommission our limited amount of natural gas power generation,” Penner said.
“Right now, in Campbell River, Island Generation is operating at full capacity. It’s producing 275 megawatts of electricity for BC Hydro. If we didn’t have that today, we’d be importing even more electricity from the United States. It’s a cold week, and BC Hydro’s called on Island Generation to produce electricity.
“I think it’s extremely dangerous not to have that dispatchable resource available, and yet that’s what the current government policy is calling for.”
Penner agrees B.C. needs more power, including wind power, though he questions the way the NDP government is going about securing it.
As part of a fast-tracking effort, the renewable energy projects will be exempted from the Environmental Assessment review process.
“It does not make sense to me that a permitting and assessment process on wind projects is longer than the construction process,” Dix said at a press conference Thursday.
Penner said that appears to be a tacit admission that the Environmental Assessment process is too onerous and needs to be revamped.
“It’s an admission that the environmental process is broken,” Penner said. “And so what about everyone else that’s languishing? I think this is an acknowledgement that some systemic improvements are required.
"It’s not fair to other proponents that they’re left to languish for years, spinning their wheels. That has a serious impact on our economy as well.”
Despite the new Site C dam now ramping up, the B.C. government and BC Hydro are forecasting a possible power shortfall, due in no small part to an increasing demand for electrification as part of the CleanBC climate action plans.
BC Hydro last year put out a new call for power proposals from independent power producers and approved 10 – nine wind farms and one solar project – which will receive 30-year electricity purchase agreements with BC Hydro. They range in capacity from 94 MW to 200 MW in size.
The province is going mostly with wind power because it fits B.C.’s energy profile needs and is comparatively cheap to build. Dix noted that renewable energy projects like wind and solar produce no emissions and are “some of the lowest cost power you can get.”
While wind and solar are cheap to build, their intermittency makes them less valuable than firm dispatchable power. It’s not known just how much BC Hydro will be paying power producers on a per MW basis for new wind power – another transparency issue that Penner is underlining.
Asked how much BC Hydro will pay per MW, Dix couldn’t or wouldn’t say, but pointed out the total cost -- $6 billion – for the wind and solar projects, compared to $16 billion that Site C dam cost. BC Hydro says the "average price" for the current round of wind projects is about 40 per cent lower than BC Hydro’s previous power call in 2010.
The actual price BC Hydro is paying under the new electricity purchase agreements is not public, however. Nor is it known how efficient wind power has been in B.C. to date, in terms of actual generation and value.
“We’re expected to pay billions of dollars over the next few years for these new wind power projects, that are now being short-circuited in terms of environmental review, but we don’t know how our existing wind projects operated,” Penner said.
Penner would like to see BC Hydro or some other government agency, like the BCER, develop the kind of electricity dashboard that Alberta has. It was among the 10 recommendations for energy security the Energy Futures Institute published last year.
“That was one of our specific recommendations – to allow greater transparency by having a real-time dashboard available so people can see what sources of electricity we have in British Columbia, how much we’re importing, how much we’re exporting, and within B.C. what is the profile of the electricity generation at any given time.”
Another recommendation was that B.C. consider “all available solutions” for power generation and cancel plans to decommission existing power plants, like Island Generation.
