The British Columbia Hydro and Power Authority, operating asBC Hydro, is a Canadian electric utility in the province of British Columbia. It is the main electricity distributor, serving more than 4 million customers in most areas,[3] with the exception of the City of New Westminster, where the city runs its own electrical department[4] and portions of the West Kootenay, Okanagan, the Boundary Country and Similkameen regions, where FortisBC, a subsidiary of Fortis Inc. directly provides electric service to 213,000 customers and supplies municipally owned utilities in the same area.[5] As a provincial Crown corporation, BC Hydro reports to the BC Ministry of Energy, Mines and Low Carbon Innovation, and is regulated by the British Columbia Utilities Commission (BCUC). Its mandate is to generate, purchase, distribute and sell electricity.
BC Hydro operates 32 hydroelectric facilities and two natural gas-fueled thermal power plants. As of 2014, 95 per cent of the province's electricity was produced by hydroelectric generating stations, which consist mostly of large hydroelectric dams on the Columbia and Peace rivers.[6] BC Hydro's various facilities generate between 43,000 and 54,000 gigawatt hours of electricity annually, depending on prevailing water levels. BC Hydro's nameplate capacity is about 11,000 megawatts.[7]
For the 2013-2014 fiscal year, the domestic electric sales volume was 53,018 gigawatt hours, revenue was CA$5.392 billion and net income was CA$549 million.[8]
History
Buntzen Lake Power Plant #1 in 1907 from BC Electric Company, a company which would ultimately become BC Hydro through legislative action.
BC Hydro was created in 1961 when the government of British Columbia, under Premier W. A. C. Bennett, passed the BC Hydro Act. This act led to the expropriation of the BC Electric Company and its merging with the BC Power Commission, to create the British Columbia Hydro and Power Authority (BCHPA).[9]
The BC Power Commission had been established with the Electric Power Act in 1945 by Premier John Hart. The mandate of the Power Commission was to amalgamate existing power and generating facilities across the province not served by BC Electric, and to extend service to the many smaller communities without power.[10]
In 1957 BC Electric Company moved from its Carrall Street headquarters to a modern 21 storey building on Burrard Street. In 1998, it was converted to condominiums and renamed the Electra Building.A 1954 Brill trolley bus that has been preserved in a paint scheme adopted by BC Hydro in 1962. Note Hydro logo on front.
Also about this time, sawmills and factories converted to electricity, further increasing the demand for electric power. BC Electric developed more hydro stations in the province. Similarly, small towns also built and operated their own power stations. More power transmission lines were also built. Dams and hydro-electric generating stations were built on Vancouver Island on the Puntledge, Jordan, and Elk rivers in the 1920s.
By the time of the First World War, private cars and jitneys were beginning to affect streetcar traffic. New dams were planned, including the diversion from the Bridge River to Seton Lake, near Lillooet, but the economic depression of the 1930s halted this business expansion. Also with the depression came an increase in the ridership, and a decrease in the maintenance of the streetcar system. In 1947, the BC Power Commission completed the John Hart Generating Station at Campbell River. In the early 1950s the ageing streetcars and interurban trains were replaced by electric trolley buses, and diesel buses. BC Electric finally completed the Bridge River Generating Station in 1960.
In 1958, BC Electric began construction of the oil-fired (later converted to natural gas) Burrard Generating Station near Port Moody. It opened in 1961 and operated only intermittently when needed. In 2001, it represented over 9% of BC Hydro's gross metered generation. The gas turbines at the Burrard Generating Station were decommissioned in 2016 to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, and the plant continues to be used as synchronous condenser facility.
On August 1, 1961, just days after company president Dal Grauer died, the BC government passed the legislation which changed BC Electric from a private company to a crown corporation known as BC Hydro.
The new corporation's responsibility including running the portions of the BC Electric Railway route still operating, for mass transit operation of the Vancouver trolley bus system (comprising a portion of the urban bus routes in Vancouver), as well as all the electric generation, transmission, and distribution operations.
In 1988, BC Hydro sold its Gas Division which distributed natural gas in the Lower Mainland and Victoria to Inland Natural Gas. Inland changed its name to BC Gas, and was sold and changed name again to Terasen Gas in 2003. In 2007 Terasen sold the gas operation to FortisBC.
In 1988, BC Hydro's remaining railway operations were sold to the Southern Railway of British Columbia.[11] BC Hydro continues to own the railbed of the former BC Electric Railway interurban route through Burnaby and New Westminster (on which a portion of the SkytrainExpo Line was built), as well as the railway from North Delta through Surrey, Langley, and Abbotsford all the way to Chilliwack (which continues to be operated by Southern Rail). A segment of the BC Hydro route through Langley is also leased to BC Rail to link the Canadian National Railway mainline, Burlington Northern Santa Fe, and the Roberts Bank Superport.[12]
In 2003 the BC government passed several pieces of legislation to redefine and regulate power utilities in British Columbia. The Transmission Corporation Act created the British Columbia Transmission Corporation (BCTC) as an independent transmission provider, but which only lasted until 2010 until being re-merged back into BC Hydro.
Also in 2003, BC Hydro privatized and outsourced many of its support functions, including 1540 of its employees in its Customer Service, Westech IT Services, Network Computer Services, Human Resources, Financial Systems, Purchasing, and Building and Office Services groups. These services were first outsourced to Accenture,[13] and later to Telus and Fujitsu.
Between 1960 and 1980, BC Hydro completed six large hydro-electric generating projects. The first large dam was built on the Peace River near Hudson's Hope. The W. A. C. Bennett Dam was built to create an energy reservoir for the Gordon M. Shrum Generating Station, which has a capacity of 2,730 Megawatts of electric power and generated 13,810 gigawatt-hours of electricity per year on average 2012–16. When it was completed in 1968, the dam was the largest earth-fill structure ever built. The Williston Lake reservoir is the largest lake in British Columbia. A second smaller concrete dam was later built downstream, closer to Hudson's Hope for the Peace Canyon Generating Station which was completed in 1980.
Under the terms of the Columbia River Treaty with the US, BC Hydro built a number of dams and hydro-electric generating stations including two large projects at Mica and Revelstoke on the Columbia River. The Keenleyside Dam on the Columbia River north of Castlegar and the Duncan Dam north of Kootenay Lake were also built under the same treaty and are used mainly for water control. Two generators were installed at Keenleyside in 2002, though these are owned and operated by the Columbia Power Corporation (a separate Crown Corporation). Kootenay Canal Generating Station on the Kootenay River between Nelson and Castlegar was completed in 1976. The Seven Mile Dam and Generating Station on the Pend d'Oreille River near Trail were completed in 1979.
The Hugh Keenleyside Dam (left) was completed in 1968. The Arrow Lakes Generating Station (right) was added in 2002.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s BC Hydro investigated the feasibility of geothermal power production at Meager Creek, north of Pemberton. They concluded from their testing that the underground rock wasn't permeable enough to justify large-scale production of electricity.[14] Around the same time, BC Hydro initiated a project to develop a coal-fired thermal generating station at Hat Creek near Cache Creek, but abandoned the effort in 1981 due to strong environmental opposition.[15]
In 1989 the Power Smart and Resource Smart programs were initiated by BC Hydro to promote energy conservation as an alternative to the cost of creating new generating facilities. Since 2001, BC Hydro has focused on its conservation and energy efficiency programs, re-investing in its existing facilities, and purchasing clean, renewable energy from Independent Power Producers. According to the "British Columbia Energy Plan",[16] released in 2007, BC Hydro must ensure that clean or renewable electricity generation continues to account for at least 90 percent of total generation. As of 2014, 97 percent of BC Hydro's electricity generation comes from clean or renewable sources and this generation only emits 730,000 tonnes of CO2 annually from thermal plants.[17]
In 1980 the BC Government established the BC Utilities Commission (BCUC) to regulate public energy utilities and to act as an independent, quasi-judicial regulatory agency regarding energy rates. BC Hydro's operations are overseen by this commission, and governed through an Electric Tariff and an Open Access Transmission Tariff.
Site C Dam
While BC Hydro initially looked at Site C on the Peace River near Fort St. John in the late 1950s, it wasn't until 1982 that it submitted a Site C development project to the British Columbia Utilities Commission (BCUC). It was turned down by the BCUC at that time.[citation needed] Another attempt to revive it in the 1990s was blocked by environmental concerns.[18] In 2004 the BC government's Energy Plan[19] instructed BC Hydro to begin discussions with First Nations, the Province of Alberta and communities to discuss Site C as a future option.[20] In May 2014, a federal-provincial Joint Review Panel released a report into the project's environmental, economic, social, heritage, and health effects.[21] A notice of Site C construction commencing in 2015 was issued July 2015.[22] Revelstoke Dam built in 1984 was the last new dam built by BC Hydro.
Independent Power Producers
BC Hydro high voltage transmission lines in Coquitlam
The BC Hydro Public Power Legacy and Heritage Contract Act requires BC Hydro to meet the province's future needs for power through private developers. These acts have allowed Independent Power Producers (IPPs) to sell power to BC Hydro, which is required by law to buy it from them even at a loss.[23] In 2011 BC Hydro spent $567.4 million on electricity from IPPs. In 2013, BC Hydro had 127 Electricity Purchase Agreements in its supply portfolio, representing 22,200 gigawatt hours of annual energy and over 5,500 megawatts of capacity.[24] In 2013 those purchases will be $781.8 million in 2013 and $939.8 million in 2014, representing about 20% of domestic supply.[25][26]
Exports and Imports
Through its interties, BC Hydro exports and imports electric power through its wholly owned power marketing and trading subsidiary, Powerex, which was established in 1988. Powerex also markets the Canadian Entitlement energy from the Columbia River Treaty.[27] BC Hydro belongs to a power sharing consortium which includes electric utilities in Alberta, Washington, Oregon, Idaho and California. The flexibility of the interties contributes to system reliability, for example importing energy in low-water years, or importing when there is a system contingency. In 2013 British Columbia's minister of energy and mines, Bill Bennett spoke to why BC Hydro was agreeing to a $750 million settlement with California over claims Powerex manipulated electricity prices.[28]
Financial performance
Financial data 2000-2022 (year ending on March 31) millions of Canadian dollars [29][30][31][32]
BC Hydro's Power Smart program encourages energy conservation among its residential, commercial, and industrial customers. The program also aims to promote energy saving retail products and building construction, and includes a "Sustainable Communities Program". Its in-house Resource Smart program is used to identify and implement efficiency gains at existing BC Hydro facilities. BC Hydro also practices energy conservation at its generating facilities through the continuous monitoring and efficient use of the water resources used to power its generators.
BC Hydro was committed by the BC government's Energy Plan to achieve electric power self-sufficiency in the province by 2016, with all new generation plants having zero net greenhouse gas emissions by the same year.[34] In 2013, BC Hydro released an Integrated Resource Plan which includes meeting at least 66 percent of the expected increase in electricity demand through increased energy efficiency.[35]
BC Hydro has also entered into energy purchase contracts with a new category of company created by special legislation, Independent Power Producers (IPPs) to buy electricity generated from intermittent renewable sources, mainly from small capacity run of river hydro and more recently, wind power, wood residue energy, and energy from organic municipal waste.[36] There has been some criticism of this policy on the basis that it will result in Hydro paying significantly higher rates to private producers than it would have if the power were self-generated.[37][38]
In 2024, BC Hydro initiated agreements for nine wind farm projects, expected to collectively generate nearly 5,000 gigawatt hours annually, increasing the grid's capacity by 8% by 2031. This C$6 billion investment in wind energy underscores BC Hydro's efforts to meet growing electricity demand with sustainable solutions.[40]
Cost of Electricity
In November 2013 the BC Minister of Energy and Mines announced a 10-year plan that will keep electricity rates as low as possible. Increases during the first five years will be between 9 and 3 percent annually.[41] BC Hydro's profitability is affected by its large debt, estimated to reach five billion dollars by 2017.[42]
Smart Meters
BC Hydro's Smart Metering Program in 2011 introduced the installation of Itron C2S0D Smart meters as mandatory.[43] In 2013 BC Hydro offered the Meter Choices Program for $20 to $30 monthly.[44][45][46]
The W. A. C. Bennett Dam is a large hydroelectric dam on the Peace River in northern British Columbia, Canada. At 186 metres (610 ft) high, it is one of the world's highest earth fill dams. Construction of the dam began in 1961 and culminated in 1968. At the dam, the Finlay, the Parsnip and the Peace rivers feed into Williston Lake, also referred to as Williston Reservoir. It is the third largest artificial lake in North America as well as the largest body of fresh water in British Columbia. Williston Lake runs 250 kilometres north–south and 150 kilometres east–west.
Fortis Inc. is a St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador-based international diversified electric utility holding company. It operates in Canada, the United States, Central America, and the Caribbean. In 2015, it earned CA$6.7 billion.
The Manitoba Hydro-Electric Board, operating as Manitoba Hydro, is the electric power and natural gas utility in the province of Manitoba, Canada. Founded in 1961, it is a provincial Crown Corporation, governed by the Manitoba Hydro-Electric Board and the Manitoba Hydro Act. Today the company operates 16 interconnected generating stations. It has more than 527,000 electric power customers and more than 263,000 natural gas customers. Since most of the electrical energy is provided by hydroelectric power, the utility has low electricity rates. Stations in Northern Manitoba are connected by a HVDC system, the Nelson River Bipole, to customers in the south. The internal staff are members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 998 while the outside workers are members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 2034.
The Columbia River Treaty is a 1961 agreement between Canada and the United States on the development and operation of dams in the upper Columbia River basin for power and flood control benefits in both countries. Four dams were constructed under this treaty: three in the Canadian province of British Columbia and one in the U.S. state of Montana.
The electricity sector in Canada has played a significant role in the economic and political life of the country since the late 19th century. The sector is organized along provincial and territorial lines. In a majority of provinces, large government-owned integrated public utilities play a leading role in the generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity. Ontario and Alberta have created electricity markets in the last decade to increase investment and competition in this sector of the economy.
Nova Scotia Power Inc. is a vertically integrated electric utility in Nova Scotia, Canada. It is privately owned by Emera and regulated by the provincial government via the Nova Scotia Utility and Review Board (NSUARB). Nova Scotia Power Inc provides electricity to 520,000 residential, commercial and industrial customers in Nova Scotia.
The British Columbia Transmission Corporation (BCTC) was a Crown corporation in the province of British Columbia, Canada that existed from 2003 to 2010. BCTC's mandate was to plan, build, operate and maintain B.C.'s electrical transmission network.
Canada has access to all main sources of energy including oil and gas, coal, hydropower, biomass, solar, geothermal, wind, marine and nuclear. It is the world's second largest producer of uranium, third largest producer of hydro-electricity, fourth largest natural gas producer, and the fifth largest producer of crude oil. In 2006, only Russia, the People's Republic of China, the United States and Saudi Arabia produce more total energy than Canada.
FortisBC is a British Columbia based regulated utility that provides natural gas and electricity. FortisBC has approximately 2,600 employees serving more than 1.2 million customers in 135 B.C. communities and 58 First Nations communities across 150 Traditional Territories.
The Jordan River Dam, officially the Jordan River Diversion Dam, and known locally simply as Diversion Dam, is a dam located in Jordan River, British Columbia, Canada. It is part of the second hydroelectric development on Vancouver Island.
The electricity policy of Alberta, enacted through several agencies, is to create an electricity sector with a competitive market that attracts investors, while providing consumers with reliable and affordable electricity, as well as reducing harmful pollution to protect the environment and the health of Albertans, according to their 2022 website.
According to the International Hydropower Association, Canada is the fourth largest producer of hydroelectricity in the world in 2021 after the United States, Brazil, and China. In 2019, Canada produced 632.2 TWh of electricity with 60% of energy coming from Hydroelectric and Tidal Energy Sources).
Natural gas was Canada's third largest source of energy production in 2018, representing 22.3% of all energy produced from fuels in the country. By contrast, the share of fuel-based energy production from natural gas in 2013 was 17.0%, indicating a growth rate of approximately 1.06% per year.
The Waneta Dam is a concrete gravity-type hydroelectric dam on the Pend d'Oreille River in the Canadian province of British Columbia. It lies 9.5 kilometres (6 mi) downstream of Seven Mile Dam at the Pend d'Oreille's confluence with the Columbia River. It is located about 12.5 kilometres (8 mi) southeast of Trail and 0.35 kilometres (0.2 mi) north of the U.S. border at Washington.
The Site C Dam is a hydroelectric dam currently under construction on the Peace River, 14 kilometers southwest of Fort St. John in northeastern British Columbia, Canada. It is located approximately 80 kilometers downstream from the W. A. C. Bennett Dam. When completed in 2025, it will become the fourth largest producer of hydroelectricity in British Columbia, with an expected capacity of 1,100 MW and an expected annual output of 4,600 GWh of electricity.
Powerex Corp. is the wholly owned energy marketing and trading subsidiary of BC Hydro. Powerex buys and sells wholesale electricity, natural gas and environmental energy products and services in Western North America (WECC). In business since 1988, Powerex Corp. is headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia. Powerex also markets the Canadian Entitlement energy from the Columbia River Treaty.
The Kootenay Canal is a hydroelectric power station, located 19 km downstream of Nelson, British Columbia, Canada. Where the Kootenay River flows out of the reservoir formed by the Corra Linn Dam on Kootenay Lake., a canal diverts water to BC Hydro's Kootenay Canal Generating Station. Its construction was a result of the Duncan Dam and Libby Dam providing year round flows into Kootenay Lake. The powerhouse was completed in 1976.
The Kemano Generating Station is situated 75 km (47 mi) southeast of Kitimat in the province of British Columbia, Canada. It was completed in 1954, providing hydroelectricity for Alcan's Kitimat Aluminum smelter. The powerhouse is built in a cavern created 427 m (1,400 ft) inside the base of Mt Dubose. It produces 896 MW of power from its eight generator units, each of which has a capacity of 112 MW. It was the largest producer in the province when it was built, and is now the fifth largest electrical plant in British Columbia.
Independent power producer (IPP) projects have had a significant presence in British Columbia since the 1980s. Their relationship with BC Hydro grew from the province's need to supply growing energy demands and implementation of the 2002 Energy Strategy, which mandated that BC Hydro would purchase its energy supply from IPPs rather than generating the supply itself. There are a variety of power projects in BC, with the most popular being hydroelectricity and biomass projects. In recent years, more attention has been placed on the environmental effects of IPP projects and the social implications it has to residents living around the project development sites. Despite the decline in demand for new IPP projects, in 2016 they supplied 20,000 GWh, one-third of BC Hydro's total.
↑ B.C. Hydro. Power Pioneers (1998). Gaslights to gigawatts: A human history of BC Hydro and its predecessors. Vancouver: Hurricane Press. p.135. ISBN0-9698845-2-4.
↑ B.C. Hydro. Power Pioneers (1998), op. cit., p. 73.
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CA$7.591 billion(2022) [1] 
CA$668 million(2022) [1] 
