$5-billion plan for B.C.'s aging power infrastructure
In a multi-part series, Vancouver Sun reporter Scott Simpson and photographer Ian Lindsay are documenting the new infrastructure and coming challenges involved in B.C.'s massive $5.1-billion effort to create a modern, efficient and reliable electricity transmission grid
Scott Simpson
Vancouver Sun
Friday, June 06, 2008
Cecil Dunn is among Tsawwassen residents
who object to a BC Transmission Corp. project that
strings new power lines through residents' backyards.
CREDIT: Ian Lindsay, Vancouver Sun
The Crown corporation charged with managing the province's electricity grid is undertaking a massive spending program
The steel towers and high voltage lines that make up British Columbia's electricity grid are getting old, and the existing infrastructure is too small for a growing province.
There are literally hundreds of places around B.C. where the transmission grid needs attention. It's going to cost a minimum $5.1 billion to fix it.
The work facing the grid's caretaker, BC Transmission Corp., encompasses everything from painting rusting towers to stringing new lines through some of the most spectacular terrain in the province.
Beginning today, and in the coming weeks, The Vancouver Sun is going to tell you about some of those projects in stories by energy reporter Scott Simpson and pictures by photographer Ian Lindsay, in a series entitled Wired.
In today's opening story, we visit Tsawwassen, where residents are outraged with BCTC and the provincial government's mishandling of a project to run new transmission lines through their backyards. Elsewhere, stakeholder groups including the B.C. Old Age Pensioners Association and the Joint Industry Electricity Steering Committee -- which represents B.C.'s 25 largest industrial consumers of electricity -- are worried about runaway costs for projects under the $5-billion umbrella.
Groups such as B.C. Citizens for Public Power worry that the rush to rewire the province is serving the interest of private-sector power developers and electricity buyers in the United States at the expense of ratepayers in British Columbia.
These and other controversies amount to a huge test for the transmission corporation. That entity was split off five years ago from BC Hydro to focus exclusively on maintaining the reliability of the provincial power grid, but now must evolve into a fast-paced growth and construction company capable of handling one of the biggest public investment projects in British Columbia history.
© The Vancouver Sun 2008