The B.C. government has launched an upgrade on the provincial hydro system in an effort to increase the power supply by another seven per cent.
Energy Minister Adrian Dix announced the improvements on Wednesday, two days after saying the government was seriously looking at building two more hydro dams, one on Bute Inlet on the central coast and a fourth dam for the Peace River known as Site E.
While B.C. needs more power to meet a growing demand, the province also needs to optimize the existing infrastructure, so it can “squeeze every electron” out of dams, transmission and distribution systems, Dix said.
“It is faster than building new generation from scratch, and it maximizes the value of decades of investment by British Columbia hydro ratepayers and the people of B.C.,” he said at a news conference in Vancouver.
The government said in a statement that various projects will add more than 1,000 megawatts to the system.
Dix said the largest of the projects will expand the Revelstoke Dam by adding a sixth generating unit for an additional 500 megawatts of power by 2032.
The first four units at the Revelstoke generating station will also be updated, while six other generating stations and the W.A.C. Bennett Dam will be part of the modernization plan, the minister said.
He said the investments are the best and most cost-effective way to unlock more power from the system that is already generating electricity.
The government said in a statement that the upgrades to the Revelstoke dam will generate about $60 million in local spending and employ up to 180 workers, but it did not provide a cost estimate.
Dix said the government will provide details as the projects unfold, but he promised savings, as he compared the work on the Revelstoke Generating Station with the John Horgan Dam, previously known as Site C.
While the new dam on the Peace River with a final cost of $16.6 billion has a capacity of up to 1,230 megawatts, the improvements to the existing dam on the Columbia River near Revelstoke will add 500 megawatts “at a fraction of the cost” of a new build, Dix said.
“Just to put it in context, an optimization project like Revelstoke 6 would be about 1/16th the cost of say, the Site C dam,” he said. “So, it’s a much smaller project.”
The improvements are the latest in a series of energy-related announcements in the past few weeks.
In May, Dix and Premier David Eby announced an update to the Power Smart energy-saving program.
The government committed $1 billion to help residents reduce their energy consumption for 2,200 gigawatts hours of annual energy savings.
BC Hydro says the plan will save or defer more than $2 billion in generation, transmission and distribution costs.