'The situation on Vancouver Island is ... somewhat tenuous. Maybe others share this with me, but I'm not exactly clear as to where B.C. Hydro is going with that."
The comment was made by Liberal MLA John Les this week, at a Crown corporations committee meeting.
And it was directed at none other than B.C. Hydro chairman Larry Bell. Anyone alarmed at the realization a member of the government doesn't understand what B.C. Hydro is up to should just relax. That's the way it's always been.
With a utilities commission hearing set to begin Monday in Nanaimo on whether Hydro's plan for a $340-million gas-fired generating plant at Duke Point -- at the end of a $340-million pipeline -- is a good idea, the Chilliwack MLA seems to have summed up the situation fairly well.
Considering the size of the project and the length of time Hydro has been working on upgrading the Island's power supply, the Vancouver Island Generation Project is still open to a number of questions.
Hydro has been filing lots of answers in the Q and A run-up to the hearings, but more questions keep piling up.
And the biggest ones revolve around two last-minute alternate proposals that surfaced recently. Here are capsule views of the three main concepts to alleviate a looming power crunch on Vancouver Island:
- B.C. Hydro's plan is to run a natural gas pipeline -- the Georgia Strait Crossing -- from Washington state to the Island (it is partners with a U.S. pipeline company) where it would run a big generation plant at Duke Point.
- Terasen Gas, the new corporate identity of Centra Gas-B.C. Gas, suggests its existing all-B.C. pipeline could be enhanced or doubled and an Island storage facility built, at considerable savings. It would fuel the Hydro's project or any other gas generation plan that comes up.
- Norske Canada has suggested it could supplant the need for Hydro's project by building smaller co-generation plants at three Island pulp mills, which would run partly on wood fibre.
Bell and senior Hydro executive Bob Elton told the MLAs that Hydro is "very obviously interested" in the alternate ideas, even though they appear to negate either the GSX pipeline, or the big generation plant, or both.
Hydro will open the hearings Monday by stating, according to Bell, "Provided we can get firm proposals ... that fit in with this timeline (a 2007 deadline) we're very interested in looking at them." But he warned that the others have a lot of work to do in proving their cases and explaining their financing.
He still wants the green light from the commission to go ahead with its plan, while it entertains any other proposals that can meet the deadline.
"We still think that GSX is the appropriate way to solve the gas supply issue."
Hydro wants authority to go ahead with the $700-million-plus project and then either build it, or delay it if there were assurances the Norske plants would come on stream quickly.
The utility has already spent more than $100 million on the pipeline and plant projects, which have endured a change of government, various energy ministers, a brand new energy policy, big cost overruns and lengthy regulatory delays.
Most recently, Hydro's major customers more or less came out against it, as they're worried about relying on natural gas.
There are other ideas rattling around.
Another conservation push will begin this fall and a variety of much smaller "green energy" projects have been OK'd. But none of those will do away with the need for a couple of hundred more megawatts of power on this Island in the next few years.
I don't know if B.C. Hydro is as affable and open to new ideas as Larry Bell seems to be. But I do know that seven years and $100 million into the planning process is an odd time to be still up in the air about what exactly should be done about a looming power shortage.
Just So You Know: Bell also provided a sneak preview of news expected shortly on the farming out of Hydro's 1,500-employee customer service and info tech departments to a new joint venture between Hydro and Accenture.
The B.C. Liberals approved the idea partly on the strength of promises the business would grow, take over more corporations' office functions, and create more jobs.
Bell had some progress to report on that front. A western Canadian utility will sign up with Accenture in two or three weeks. An understanding has been reached with a major B.C. corporation that may become public in two or three months.
A bit of work is being done with a utility in Louisiana, there's a "serious inquiry" from Australia and another from a major government institution in Toronto.
Bell said the new company has 1.6 million Hydro customer accounts but needs about five million such accounts to achieve maximum efficiencies.
leyne@island.net