On April 10, Northern Insights reported that Liberals will force BC Hydro to provide firm-power to private producers for export. Privates want a choice of selling to BC Hydro or contracting with their own customers. However, they cannot guarantee availability of their own power on a continuous basis and the market value of interruptible power is unsatisfactory. The ability to make up shortages by accessing electricity from BC Hydro solves a major problem for private companies.
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Not merely consistent with guilt but inconsistent with innocence
Now, despite claims that Site C’s 900-megawatt capacity is needed for domestic use, government intends to proceed so that it can facilitate power exports.
The first element of this policy is confirmed by the Globe and Mail’s Justine Hunter in Site C dam laying groundwork for surge in energy exports.
The publicly owned utility, BC Hydro, is expanding clean power purchases from independent power producers, but many of those projects, such as wind power or run-of-the-river, do not provide the reliable capacity that exporters want. By having a greater supply of so-called firm energy from large hydro-electric dams, the province will be in a stronger position to sell its power to other western provinces and the United States.
Categories: BC Hydro, Globe and Mail
IN-SIGHTS 
Hope you all are listening to cheerleader Mike Smythe on CKNW. He's doing the same cheerleading for site C as he did for the Eagleridge destruction. Another reason to create an independant Fraser Valley. Now he will start attacking those who protest site C as small minded.
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100 or so private IPPs have already signed agreements to sell all their power only to BC Hydro.
When you say the IPPs want the option of contracting to different customers, are you talking about new IPPs that do not yet sell to BC Hydro?
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There are hundreds of more applications in process and preparation. Yes, the strategy of the private power industry is changing. Recognizing the blunt political difficulty of forcing BC Hydro to take or pay future production, at prices unrelated to market, they aim to create a more complicated strategy, not so readily understood by the average voter. The privates want to sell guaranteed flows of electricity to get the best prices. Therefore, they must be able to supplement their supplies during low parts of the production cycles by drawing firm power from BC Hydro.
BC Liberals believe that facilitating private power friends is how they can create a power export industry. That is what WAC Bennett, the father of BC Hydro, wanted to avoid. Bennett said, “Let the industrial users come locate in BC, don't send the power to them. Keep jobs and resources here.”
There is a similar situation happening in the forest industry. We used to export lumber and value added products, now we export vast quantities of wood chips and logs while the processing industries close down.
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