Wind Power, Electrical Grid

Is Newfoundland and Labrador Being Sold Down The River on Lower Churchill?

By Myles Higgins

Wednesday, September 5, 2007

CBC News is reporting today that they've uncovered a report, completed in 2005, at the request of the provincial government. The document states that while Newfoundland and Labrador has massive wind energy potential it does not have the capacity in its electrical infrastructure (grid) to handle that potential.

According to CBC, the government report says the grid will limit the size of potential projects despite having a "world-class wind resource"

While the inability of the provincial grid to handle large scale wind power presents a serious problem, it also points to an even bigger issue for Newfoundland and Labrador, both developmentally and politically.

Since taking office Premier Danny Williams and Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro CEO, Ed Martin, have been adamant that they are seriously considering bypassing Quebec and using a maritime route to bring lower Churchill power to markets in Canada and the U.S. The question now becomes whether they are actually considering this option or if they've been misleading the public with politically motivated blather for months?

Everyone in the province knows that a maritime route will require the laying of an undersea cable from Labrador to the island of Newfoundland. The power would then need to travel down the Northern Peninsula and to another cable from the island to New Brunswick. While the public expected that additional costs would be associated with the undersea links, there now appears to be a major roadblock with transporting the power across the island itself.

If the existing grid can't handle an additional few hundred megawatts of wind power, what are the odds it can handle more than 2000 megawatts from the Lower Churchill?

Of course the public will have to wait for the release of the provincial energy plan, expected sometime this month, to find out if the province has plans to upgrade the provincial grid, but for now it looks like talk of a maritime route has been nothing more than rhetoric and politics at play.

I've always been a proponent of using as much lower Churchill power as possible inside the province, especially as a means to facilitate industrial expansion in Labrador. If the power can't be used locally, then at the very least our province needs to ensure that a repeat of the ransom demands Quebec presented on the upper Churchill are not repeated.

With the contents of this 2005 report now in the public domain, and with no major industrial giants lined up by the Williams government to use the power at home, it would seem the only options left are to once again go through Quebec, on its terms, or forget the project all together.

If that's the case, I'll take the latter choice, thank-you very much. I suspect most of the voters in the province will want to take the same option.