Heat Wave Puts Pressure on Hydro
Thursday, July 17, 2014 @ 3:52 AM
Prince George, B.C. – The heat wave that has been cooking the province has resulted in a boost to hydro demand.
BC Hydro has recorded boosts in power consumption over the past few days.
On Monday, the electricity demand between 5 and 6 pm peaked at 7,302 megawatts. That was up 433 megawatts over the previous Monday evening.
On Tuesday night, the 5-6 p.m. load was 7,218 megawatts, an increase of 232 megawatts from the previous Tuesday.
BC Hydro has enough capacity available to serve the additional electricity load.
Comments
In a CBC article BC Hydro said they have evacuated 200 employees from the WAC Bennett and Peace dams and can run them by remote control if need be. Furthermore they say if need be they can shut down those two dams and have more than enough power to supply the province from its other dams down south.
My question is if BC Hydro can still produce enough to run the province with the WAC Bennett and Peace dams off line, and in light of the increased demand from the hot weather… than clearly we have a lot of room for variance and it brings into question the real pressing need for Site C.
Furnaces don’t come on in the summer,people cook outside more,lights don’t have to be on longer!probably all those air conditioners down south,Do we get a high demand for hydro at -35 report!
As I stated many times before. There is no shortage of power in BC.
The only shortage of power we do have, is in the area of Brain power, both in Hydro, and the BC Government.
lets say at 10 cents a kwh, how much more Revenue is this ? This is what Hydro does ,sell Power!
So folks just think about what you are saying about no shortage of power. If we didn’t have the other dams and the peace power was shut down then what? The grid is designed in case of a major generation outage the remaining generation can carry the load. Also covered is when one generation are has a water shortage most likely the other areas are fine. It’s called contingency planning.
Load is increasing overall, site c is needed in the mix.
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