by Arthur Caldicott
Plutonic Power Corporation is one in a battery of companies flooding BC Hydro with small hydroelectric generation projects. Arthur Caldicott takes a wide-ranging look at small hydro and the issues that arise from it.
Since 2000, BC Hydro has received dozens of small hydroelectric generation proposals. Fourteen are now producing electricity. BC Hydro has signed Electricity Purchase Agreements (EPAs) with about sixty of them, totaling nearly 1500 megawatts (MW) of generating capacity, about an eighth of all provincial generation. And there are many more proposals to come.
The largest small hydro plant in service so far is Rutherford Creek, just south of Pemberton, capable of generating 50 MW. The largest project is Plutonic’s East Toba River and Montrose Creek Hydroelectric Project, consisting of two interconnected hydro plants totalling 196 MW. On the micro-hydro end of the small hydro scale are numerous schemes under 10 MW. The smallest, at only 0.2 MW, is also the cleverest, West Vancouver’s Eagle Lake. These are not the massive dam and reservoir projects of BC’s “heritage” systems such as the G.M. Shrum generating station where the Peace River now begins, capable of pumping out more than 2700 MW at full throttle — by itself a quarter of BC’s capacity.
But what these new projects don’t have in size, they make up in sheer numbers. They are making it up in intrusions into hundreds of undeveloped areas with roads, dams, pipelines, temporary construction camps, and a permanent spiderwork of transmission lines. They are making it up in dozens of issues affecting communities and local governments. And they are more than making it up in creation of phenomenal wealth that will transfer from the pockets of British Columbia’s electricity users and run straight into the hands of company shareholders.
All is not well with small hydro in BC.
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[From WS January/February 2007]
