The provincial electricity infrastructure is aging. BC Hydro is investing heavily in maintenance to its existing distribution system and the local region will get a significant portion of that activity.
The Crown corporation's vice-president of transmission and distribution, Greg Reimer, was in Prince George this week to meet with local crews, BC Hydro front office staff, and other stakeholders in the local grid.
"As time has gone by, the overall system has assets that are aging and needing to be repaired or rebuilt," said Reimer. "In terms of the transmission system, we spent $700 million for the new Northwest Transmission Line and another $300 for a line between Dawson Creek and Chetwynd. That is to provide service in areas we know there is going to be significant demand. The existing distribution system is in pretty good shape, as far as age and capacity, so as long as we keep up with a steady maintenance program, we think it will satisfy the needs of our customers for the next 10 years for sure. We will be spending $7.5 million on those projects in the Prince George area alone."
Part of the maintenance program is replacing the wooden poles holding up local power lines. The poles are treated for weather degradation but nonetheless have a lifespan of about 50 years and so have to be replaced at a rate of about 12,000 per year in B.C. (the provincial wooden pole count is about 900,000) and 230 of those will be swapped out in the Prince George regin this fiscal year.
The cost of buying, maintaining and replacing wooden poles is cheaper by far than installing as many made of concrete or steel, Reimer explained.
He also said BC Hydro would be paying about $400,000 for tree pruning services this fiscal year in the immediate vicinity of Prince George and another $500,000 in the larger region. This would keep branches from growing into the wires, trees from falling across the lines, or potential forest fire fuel from building up underneath the lines.
"In any maintenance and construction we do, we are planning for the decades to come so we use the technology that's available to make repairs that make sense to the job and make sense to the cost effectiveness of the project looking out into the future," he said, giving as an example the use of new couplings that replace labour-intensive splicing with connectors that congeal with explosion technology to make a tighter, more complete seizing of two lines together.
Another example is the implementation of a "smart grid" which is a series of switches implanted into the overall system that turn on and off automatically, or by remote control, that allow power to flow with maximum efficiency when spot-problems happen.
"The north is a major priority for us, and Prince George is the hub of the north for us," Reimer said. "We have more than 200 field personnel, technicians, all kinds of professions all working together to deliver electricity in world-leading fashion. B.C. has the fourth cheapest residential electricity rates in North America (behind Quebec, Manitoba and Seattle) and that is largely due to our assets in rural and northern B.C. Over the next 20 years we expect provincial electricity demand to grow by about 40 per cent, and we are proposing the Site C Dam in northern B.C. to play a major role in meeting that demand so we can maintain that edge we have in excellent electricity service."
