With electricity from the windmills eventually, that puts less of a strain on BC Hydro to provide that electricity. Which in turn will provide them with excess and then they will sell the not needed windmill electricity to some foreigner. Win win. For BC Hydro anyways.

The problem with this win win for BC hydro is that the domestic power demand will continue to grow. So what happens when water power will not be sufficient for domestic needs. The consumers of BC will have to start using the high priced private power and that will mean a dramatic increase in our power rates.

May be we should start building Site C instead of just talking about it.
Cheers

Actually BCH has signed agreements to purchase the power from these IPP's at 5 - 10 times the going rate for hydro and for a 25 year term. In other words our rates are about to sky rocket for no real reason.

I could be wrong but I think the Charlottes now run on huge generators so this would be great for them.

"I think the Charlottes now run on huge generators so this would be great for them."

The windmills are generators too. :-) So they will be switching from fossil fuel generators to wind turbine generators.

If one researches windpower, the windgeneraters generally only produce 30 to 40% of their name plate rating over a year. The wind does not always blow even on the ocean. Also the wind generally does not blow hard enough to produce name plate rating. Also how many birds will these things kill. Its bad bad bad for 24 ducks to be killed up in the oil sands but okay to kill thousands of birds by windmills, amazing.
Reducing pollution, good. Reducing our dependence on fossil fuels good. Problem is there is no easy answer. All alternatives also have a down side.

Those generaters on the charlottes will always be needed to provide backup and base power to support the wind generaters.
Denmark prides themselves with all the windgeneraters they have but are still building coal fired plants. Why?. They need the base power for when the wind don't blow. Interesting how one has to dig for that type of information. A shell game maybe, nah.

The problem that most economists agree on is that "windpower" is currently so grossly cost ineffective that this energy source will need hugh subsidies to sustain them. You can bet that there isn't a single entrepreneur on the face of the earth that would git into the windpoer business unless they had the subsidies all signed and sealed. So the question is of course not about whether windpower is a healthy source of power....we all can agree thatit is......the question is, will the taxpayers agree to support the subsidies needed to maintain that source of power.

...It's early...I apologize for the typos:)

Don't worry, Site C is on it's way!

In other words our rates are about to sky rocket for no real reason.

Would it be mind boggling if the reason for all the IPP development is for private profit.
Cheers

The last word. Rafe Mair gave us thiks bit of information
Cheers
THIS BLOG BT ERIK ANDERSEN, AN ACCOUNTANT, INVESTMENT EXPERT IS HUGELY IMPORTANT BECAUSE IT CONFIRMS WHAT I'VE BEEN SAYING ALONG - YOU AND I ARE FINANCING IPPS. PLEASE READ CAREFULLY AND TAKE THE TIME TO PASS IT ON BECAUSE AS WE ALL KNOW, THE MEDIA WON'T TOUCH THIS SUBJECT
It takes no imagination to understand one blinding truth, even by us economists. Not a single IPP project would raise a dime of financing if the IPP were unable to prove in no uncertain terms that the present value of future revenues under the contract with BC Hydro was greater than the cost to build. Let us not pussyfoot around here and make the mistake of pretending that power generation projects from run of rivers etc are philanthropic. The issue is just how big is the premium.
Based upon an examination of an earlier contract for natural gas generation, the premium was $200 million over the cost to build of $300 million (information from the contract and the developer's submissions). That is a markup of 66% over costs. Since I have yet to receive a copy of one of the
current contracts from the BCUC I will choose to continue to consider all current contracts are similar rip offs

So the last word from me on this is actually a question...

What would a banker say to a request for a loan to fund a windpower project???

Answer: GIVE ME A BREAK !!!!!!

So the last word from me on this is actually a question...

What would a banker say to a request for a loan to fund a windpower project???

Answer: GIVE ME A BREAK !!!!!!