No more rate hikes in sight for Saskpower despite warning
Despite a warning from the province’s utility rate watchdog, SaskPower has no plans to ask for another rate increase, its president said Friday.
Instead, SaskPower will focus on controlling costs and implementing a new province-wide network of “smart meters” to measure energy use, president/CEO Robert Watson said Friday.
In recommending to cabinet a 4.9-per-cent power rate increase last month, the independent Saskatchewan Rate Review Panel raised the possibility the utility might have to seek additional rate increases “given the magnitude of the investments SaskPower must make in the next 10 years in new and upgraded power-generation facilities and its transmission and distribution infrastructure.”
The provincial cabinet OK’d the rate increase this week.
But when asked about future requests for rate increases, Watson said, “We don’t forecast that at all; things change — they’re variable all the time.”
He added that SaskPower contemplates requests for rate increases on a “year-toyear basis” and in any event would request only “the minimum to keep the grid and the power safe and reliable — and affordable”.
The opposition NDP’s interpretation is that the rate hike is a direct result of a government “raid” on SaskPower’s finances last year, taking $120 million in dividends from the utility. “Now, businesses and families will pay $90.8 million more for power in 2013,” MLA Trent Wotherspoon said this week.
Watson said the Crown utility is now “paying particular attention to our operating costs to make sure they still in line and are not escalating faster than they absolutely, necessarily have to be.”
As part of that, he said SaskPower is monitoring the flow of water toward its hydroelectric facilities, hoping for a balance between a volume that causes flooding and one that requires SaskPower to buy electricity from neighbouring utilities.
Looking ahead, Watson said SaskPower plans to begin operating its new cleancoal generating facility at the Boundary Dam plant near Estevan in 2014.
It will also work on its “smart meter” project, which will use electronic technology to transmit data about energy use in homes and businesses to SaskPower and also SaskEnergy for operational and billing purposes.
Both utilities currently bill customers by estimating their energy use and doing periodic checks to reconcile estimates with actual use.
Estimated to cost SaskPower alone $190 million, this started with a technical test project in Hanley, near Saskatoon. SaskPower soon will move on to a bigger centre, Watson said.
Watson said smart meters could tell SaskPower that isolated rural areas are without power and need repair crews.
“We’re pretty keen on getting that going because that puts even more safety and operational efficiency into the system,” said Watson, who added SaskPower is “absolutely, completely” convinced of the meters’ safety.
“Having a meter on the wall of the house doesn’t tell us anything more than we know now; we just know more often,” he said.
Knowing who’s lost power is, “something we needed to do to make it safer and more operationally efficient”.
He said SaskPower hopes to have the entire province covered by 2015.