What are alternatives to proposed dam?
Some of the biggest questions that need better answers in the B.C. Utilities Commission’s review of the $8.8-billion Site C dam are about power sources that could replace the mega-dam if it were cancelled, according to commission chairman David Morton.
After just six weeks of collecting submissions from B.C. Hydro, the public and expert consultant Deloitte LLP, the commission released an interim report that detailed 73 questions it needs B.C. Hydro to answer before making recommendations to government.
“Some of the missing pieces (are in) some of the sources that B.C. Hydro screened out,” said Morton.
“We have some information from Deloitte, but we’d like to get Hydro’s take on the costs and viability of those.”
Site C would have the capacity to generate 1,100 megawatts of energy and supply some 5,300 gigawatt hours of electricity a year, enough to power 450,000 homes. Morton said the commission panel needs to be able to factor in the cost of alternatives supplied to its analysis, which include completing the project on schedule, suspending construction with the option to restart later or cancelling it outright.
“It’s difficult to do the analysis,” Morton said.
“It’s one thing to see if (the project) is on time, on budget.”
However, if the project is terminated, with expected costs of $2.1 billion to wind up activity, remove the construction camp and remediate the site, “then what do you do to replace the energy you’re not going to get from Site C?” Morton said.
The commission asked B.C. Hydro to submit more analysis of renewable-energy options that might substitute for Site C. The options the utility has include a collection of smaller wind farms, pumped-storage hydro projects, and with a sixth generating unit at its Revelstoke Dam.
However, Morton said B.C. Hydro’s list excluded potential alternatives identified by the commission’s consultant, Deloitte, such as solar and geothermal power generation and options for battery storage.
And the Hydro analysis of its alternatives, which it estimated to be a more expensive option than Site C, did not account for forecasts of declining costs for wind and solar power installations.
“We’ve asked B.C. Hydro to redo that modelling,” he said. That would let the commission consider the affect on Hydro rates of opting for the alternative power sources.
Alternatives to Site C have long been a point of discussion in B.C.’s energy sector. Critics have long argued B.C. Hydro’s forecasts for increasing demand did not consider things that would undercut the need for the dam.
In 2014, B.C.’s main lobby group for independent power producers, the Clean Energy Association of B.C., made a last-ditch effort to sell the provincial government on renewable-energy options that would be the equivalent of Site C’s output.
The association argued the roster of projects, which included wind
farms, run-of-river generation and biomass plants, could be built in increments that wouldn’t leave B.C. Hydro with a big power surplus and would be $1 billion cheaper.
At the time, then-Clean Energy B.C. executive director Paul Kariya said it was an attempt to show its members could offer cost-competitive alternatives to Site C, which is an important consideration for the commission review, said Morton.
In the interim report, the commission panel wrote that B.C. Hydro’s analysis of the expected costs of the alternative power sources it examined was “too opaque to be of value” in comparing it to Site C and that the “assumptions underlying (costs) were not well explained.”
However, the panel’s request that B.C. Hydro better explain those assumptions was just one of many information requests the utility has to deal with in a short period of time. The commission set Oct. 4 as the deadline for responses.
B.C. Hydro, on Thursday, declined to comment on the commission preliminary report, but will respond in writing to the initial findings in October, said spokeswoman Mora Scott.