BC Hydro is in a quandary.Premier Clark’s Government requires the utility purchase increasing amounts from independent power producers. However, consumers of electricity, particularly residential and commercial users – the only ones who contribute to B…
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In-Sights: BC Hydro’s primary construction – fabricating falsehoods
Derrick Penner of the Vancouver Sun reported words from the Chief of BC Hydro’s nomenklatura :In December, [Jessica] McDonald heralded Site C as “essential to keeping the lights on…”Fundamentally, (independent power projects) are important partners…
Continue readingIn-Sights: Today’s session with Ian Jessop, CFAX1070
The audio file below is a recording of my time on CFAX 1070 with Ian Jessop March 02, 2016. We talk of BC Hydro and deceitful government.Your browser does not support this audio2015, #BCHydro earned 1/5 of Quebec Hydro's operating profits but only …
Continue readingIn-Sights: Pants on fire
Before the last election, Premier Clark justified BC Hydro rate increases as a “common sense decision” that would enable the private/public utility to pay off the billions in its deferred accounts.”People are struggling, it’s a tough economy, and hydro…
Continue readingIn-Sights: IPPs paid $672 million above market price in 2015
British Columbia Hydro publishes quarterly reports that provide a long term record of consumption by domestic consumers, which are:ResidentialCommercial and light industryHeavy industryI’ve been reviewing more than 20 years of those records and they sh…
Continue readingIn-Sights: Delusion and deception are complementary
The eyes of British Columbians should be on BC Hydro’s Site C project. It is a hydro facility not needed in a province that has had a decade of flat domestic demand for electricity, despite there being no significant effort to improve efficiency and co…
Continue readingIn-Sights: Forces of Know
Site C Is a Climate-Change Disaster, Says Suzuki, Mychaylo Prystupa, The Tyee, February 23, 2016:Flooding valuable farmland to build the Site C dam undermines Canada’s commitment to meet international climate-change targets, environmentalist David Suzu…
Continue readingIn-Sights: Reader comment on BC Clean Energy Act
A regular reader provided this comment to the preceding article. Hugh explains that the capture of BC’s public utility by selfish profiteers was a carefully considered manoeuvre. In the end, it will have given billions of dollars to Liberal friends and…
Continue readingIn-Sights: BC Hydro’s 3rd quarter FY 2016 report
According to BC Hydro’s report for the nine months ended December 31, 2015, domestic consumption of electricity is down 2.2% from the same period 10 years prior.That we’ve had stable domestic power demand for more than a decade did not prevent independ…
Continue readingIn-Sights: Truth found in numbers, lies found in words
I am reading budget documents and will soon be writing more about the provincial government’s financial smoke and mirrors but I have initial comments.Natural GasBC Liberals, particularly Premier Clark, are proving to be a fine investment for British Co…
Continue readingIn-Sights: BC Jobs Plan, less than full disclosure
I’m often critical of corporate media but there is still some sharp work being done, even by people outside the major urban centres of BC. Here’s an example:References to the Temporary Foreign Worker program were scrubbed from a #SiteC job post. https:…
Continue readingIn-Sights: Why the rush to spend billions?
BC Hydro’s own sales records demonstrate Site C is not needed. Domestic consumption of electricity has been flat for more than a decade and technological efficiencies indicate we will need less power, not more in the near future. This proven by looking…
Continue readingIn-Sights: A reader comments
I’ve been reporting information taken from annual and quarterly reports of BC Hydro. There are important economic issues and billions of dollars at stake and the people who benefit from the way BC Hydro operates are many, some of them influential. Corp…
Continue readingIn-Sights: Buy high, sell low
In the six months ended September 30, BC Hydro purchased 7,640 GWh of electricity from independent power producers. It paid $599 million, which is $78,400 per GWh.In the same period, BC Hydro delivered 6,771 GWh to heavy industry at an average sale pr…
Continue readingIn-Sights: Proceeding without caution
Even slightly aware BC citizens know that Premier Clark and her accomplices are incompetent. Liberal managers include not a single person capable of completing a basic course in strategic decision making. The result is a litany of failed designs, misse…
Continue readingIn-Sights: Can we talk about fast ferries instead?
From a presentation by renowned columnist Erik Andersen on CBC…After BC Hydro made all the IPP contracts Premier Campbell found that California did not consider “run of river” generation green. Not asking California first means BC Hydro made a $40 bi…
Continue readingIn-Sights: Takin’ Care of Business
These charts demonstrate that rewarding influential friends is a prime BC Liberal purpose. Despite a decade of flat…
Posted by Norman Farrell on Friday, January 1, 2016
So, if demand for electricity is flat, even declining, why is BC Hydro, each year, paying hundreds of millions of dollars more for power from independent power producers? Without domestic demand growth, increased purchases from IPPs results in shutting down existing BC Hydro generating capacity. Yes, that’s the cheap power we could be enjoying today.
Note: The figures shown shown here are extracted from BC Hydro’s annual and quarterly reports.
In-Sights: Marcellus was correct
The more time I spend reviewing BC Hydro, the more I am reminded of the famous line spoken by a minor character in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. BC Hydro released its Second Quarter report for Fiscal Year 2016. Domestic consumption (residential, commercial and…
Continue readingIn-Sights: Shockingly high BC Hydro rate increases inevitable
The audio file below is a recording of my time on CFAX1070 with Ian Jessop October 06. We talk mostly about BC Hydro and the inevitable high-level rate increases. Your browser does not support this audio
Continue readingIn-Sights: "Radical" environmentalists proven correct
In 2009, the Wilderness Committee issued a press release. Gwen Barlee and Joe Foy were prescient: “Requiring BC Hydro to purchase power that it doesn’t need is an idiotic decision and a gift to the private power industry. Three months ago, the BCUC said buying this power was not in
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