The Snare Hydro System provides energy to more than 23,000 residents in North Slave communities.
An $24.6-million joint investment from the feds and GNWT, announced Nov. 14, is intended to help improve the reliability of the hydro system and to modernize Northern infrastructure. The money, however, will not cover the full cost of repairing a broken generator at the facility and residents, yet again, will seen another rate rider on their already astronomic power bills.
With subsidized rates in Yellowknife that sit at 23.7 cents per kilowatt hour for the first 1,000 kilowatt hours per month, we have to hope the power and utilities corporations are able to hit or maintain power targets without costing consumers more.
Providing power to a remote community shouldn't be covered by a few households, so the GNWT partially covers the real cost of power in the communities, which can range from 49 cents up to almost 70 cents per kilowatt hour – some of the highest rates in the country.
Yellowknife is fortunate that between 2014 and 2016 residents and other North Slave power consumers received close to a $50-million subsidy that covered the cost of more expensive diesel-generated electricity after low water levels impeded hydro production on the Snare River. But with the looming carbon tax, the territory needs to find more eco-friendly, cheap power.
That means working on infrastructure in diesel-dependent and thermal communities so they can connect with smarter energies. We have a good start with the Great Slave cable study – a $170,000 examination to determine whether installing transmissions lines to the diamond mines northeast of Yellowknife -- and selling off excess power to the south – is feasible. It's a dream that was scuttled in 2014 after a hydro grid expansion feasibility study came back with a whopping $1.2-billion price tag.
In 2013, the power corporation released a plan that proposes “an interconnection of the existing Snare and Taltson transmission grids to create a single synchronous grid (the 'NWT Grid').”
That report states the proposed NWT grid would allow for “better use of the existing (and underutilized) hydroelectric generation assets by reducing the need for diesel generation.”
But it also stated that the creation of such a grid would depend on the federal and territorial governments' willingness to not only fund such a project but also find new and existing industrial customers to expand that grid outside the territory.
In 2015 then-Range Lake MLA Daryl Dolynny estimated the GNWT had bailed out the power corporation with more than $100 million since 2008. He said the latest government plan was short-sighted and didn't address concrete solutions or serious alternatives.
"If we were to pull out every report, every symposium, every document in the last 10 years on how to solve our energy woes, we could plaster every wall at the legislative assembly and still have paper left over," said Dolynny.
It's time to turn the lights on. If Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is serious about tackling climate change, he can't leave the NWT in the dark with no alternative to diesel.