Residents gobble up unprecedented power

COMMENT: Well, it's been many months since we've heard from BC Hydro about how much energy we're using on the island. In the past, the numbers were brandished as part of Hydro's campaign to persuade islanders to accept the GSX Pipeline and new gas-fired generation on the island.

For this Hydro threw away at least $120 million of our money and five years of regulatory battling?

By Michelle Thompson
News Leader Pictorial
Jan 20 2007

Chilly Cowichan Valley residents helped set a record Saturday when BC Hydro reported clocking an all-time high demand for megawatts.

Early that morning, the demand for energy on Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands reached 2,289 megawatts, topping the 2005 record of 2,257 megawatts.

The Valley, excluding Crofton, ate up about 125 - or six per cent - of those megawatts. If Crofton is included in that figure, the number balloons to about 250 megawatts.

Stephen Watson, a spokesman with BC Hydro, said energy consumption in Crofton is generally high because of its industrial sector. However, he noted, it didn't do much to help break Saturday's record.

"The industrial customer generally has the same demand," he said. "The demand of residential customers can spike."

Catalyst Paper Corp. in Crofton, like its sister pulp mills in Port Alberni and Elk Falls, has something called a "coincident peak demand system" in partnership with BC Hydro.

That means the pulp mill drops its productivity demand between 4 and 8 p.m., when energy use peaks.

If that system were not in place, the demand for megawatts would have been higher Friday afternoon than it was when the record was broken that morning, according to Don McKendrick.

McKendrick, vice president of operations for Catalyst's Crofton division, said between the three plants their CPDS saved 45 megawatts of power on Friday.

By McKendrick's estimates, that is enough to power 45,000 homes.

"As a major consumer of power on the Island, Catalyst has taken initiative to avoid peaks," he said. "BC Hydro has been very helpful in working with us on this."

In the winter residential energy consumption on the Island is higher than on the Mainland because of the methods most people use to heat their homes.

Natural gas pipelines weren't being installed on the Island until the 1990s, Watson said, and that's why most residents use electric heating to keep warm in this frigid weather.

Since hydro usage peaks in the early morning and evening hours, Watson is encouraging people to use their appliances throughout the day, particularly on days when the temperature dips below zero.

Showering and dishwashing in the late morning or early afternoon would do a lot to bring the megawatt demand down, he said.

Watson is also reminding people to switch off their lights before leaving their homes.

"All these things add up," he said. "We can meet our hydro demand on the Island but it would help to shift consumption."

Unless they do, he said, high demands for hydro could mean higher electricity bills, since BC Hydro might have to import energy from outside the province order to meet demand.

"It's in everyone's best interest if they think about power consumption at home and at work," Watson said. "If people continue to consume energy at the rate they are, that means finding other ways to get energy."

That doesn't mean the Island is at risk of experiencing a blackout similar to a massive one in 2003 that left millions in the dark, though.

In the summer of that year, about 10 million Canadians were affected when excessive power usage caused a massive outage throughout parts of Ontario and the U.S.

That won't be happening here, Watson said.

"There are contingencies in place," he said. "We do have the ability to, if a system fails, go to another one."

Although Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands set a record Saturday, the province as a whole did not.