Whoopsy:
4trac:

But speaking of charging at home and extra electricity, have you spent any time digging into the situation in your home province wrt electrical capacity?  I had read a while back that Bc Hydro's claims of lots of excess capacity are premised on all sorts of demand destruction success...ie. convincing people to sign contracts that let the utility cut your unnecessary power use like baseboards heat or hot water.  Of course conservation is part of this.  All sounded a bit pie in the sky, and if their assumptions don't hold, BC would have very little extra electricity over the next 5-10 years, in a self sufficiency scenario (ie without buying power from neighbors). 

 

Actually the truth is, BC Hydro had been selling our hydro generated electricity to California and such and buying cheaper coal fired electricity from the midwest USA. 🤷🏻‍♂️ The excuse was that the profit from trading help keeps our rate low.

And site C dam is a big clusterfuck. Politics got in the way for our electricity future.

The other politics, or international relations issue with BC Hydro is that how they maintain water levels in the dozens of lakes and rivers making up their reservoirs, is complexly tied up with long term agreements with the US, because the Columbia River winds back and forth across the border.  So BC at times cannot maintain a level they need for max efficiency because they agreed not to, and probably vice versa too.  In other words their lakes serve not only as hydro batteries, but flood protection for two countries, and sometimes these goals don't jive.  All makes for a clean yes, but very complex and not very flexible power....


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