BC Hydro is hitting consumers with three years of rate hikes to:
- pay for a $6 billion upgrade to aging infrastructure, or
- to meet an expected growing demand for electricity, or
- to help friends of BC Liberals do deals like the one that brought owners of privately-owned Cloudworks Energy Inc $ 185 million.
BC Hydro is forecasting a rate hike of about 10 per cent a year in each of the next three years with much more to come after that to pay more than $30 billion contracted for private power generated from public rivers.
Categories: BC Hydro, Power Generation
in-sights.ca 
I got this from the 2010 BC Hydro Annual Report:
2010 purchases from IPPs: $568 million for 8,893 GWh @ average $63.85/MWh.
There are now about 65 IPPs supplying 11,461 GWh to BC Hydro. There are at least 35 new IPPs in the works.
http://www.bchydro.com/etc/medialib/internet/documents/planning_regulatory/acquiring_power/2010q4/IPP_Supply_List.Par.0001.File.20101001-IPP-Supply-List.pdf
So the total paid for IPP power is going to go up a lot. New IPP power will cost BC Hydro average $100/MWh. The mid C price (US) is at $35/MWh.
http://www.bloomberg.com/energy/
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The DFO is not going to come to the rescue, they have been bought and paid for by Marine Harvest and Grieg and the USFDA.
Hydro is going to flood the breadbasket of BC, and the power will go north to Alaska and straight south to the mainland USA and we are going to pay for it. Then we are going to compete for the energy with markets like LA. The money will end up on Wall Street, via GE and the like.
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Huge corporations, corruption and greed, is what governs. They don't want to pay any taxes. Who do you think is behind this latest reduction in corporate taxes? Big business doesn't give a damn, about the environment. They are interested, in their own greed, only. Campbell and Harper work very hard for big business, and global governance, which is big business. The HST is one very good example for that. The terrible eco damage of, the run of the rivers, has been mentioned before. That doesn't matter, corruption and greed wins every time. That's in our face obvious.
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Norm,
Maybe an expose on what these IPP's are doing might just get the federal DFO interested in the damage caused to fish breeding ground and ripean vegetation damage/loss. It is futile to think that the province will do anything – the government isn't interested in the environment.
It appears that there are two sets of regulations – one for the public and a special set for large corporations.
Thanks
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One person told me privately that private power producers have wreaked physical havoc on streams and watersheds that would have had loggers put out of business by provincial regulators. Somehow, the independent power producers have been given license to work without restrictions, diverting streams, building tunnels and spillways and clearing vast areas of forest lands.
This is a hard pill to swallow for many families that depended on forestry for multiple generations.
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It galls me that there is not one journalist nor politician of any stripe that will bring this reason to the forefront. The news makes no reference at all to private power and the fact that B.C. Hydro has to purchase that private power even though they don't need or want it.The deception continues and make no mistake will continue will continue unchecked with the political state of things in this province and the state of journalism which have become virtually one and the same.Only when the two separate can we hope to see truth.
Don
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