British Columbia's First Wind Project Comes On Line

British Columbia's first wind power project began generating electricity to the grid on July 23, 2009, when the first two turbines of the Bear Mountain Wind Park came on line. The project is located near Dawson Creek, BC, in the Peace Region of the province, a jumping-off point for the Alaska Highway. The 34-turbine, 102-megawatt park is expected to be fully operational by November 2009.

What's remarkable about this project is that its the first utility-scale wind park in a province that has identified as many as 69 projects with an installed capacity of nine GW as "readily available," meaning there are sufficient winds, proximity to existing transmission and appropriate terrain. When it comes to wind, however, B.C. seems to be lagging behind not only its U.S. neighbors to the south (for example, Washington has 1575 MW and Oregon 1406 MW of installed wind generating capacity), but also its fellow provinces.

So what's the deal? First, BC has had an abundant supply of water for hydroelectric generation. Indeed, the Crown-owned utility, BC Hydro, serves approximately 95% of the province's customers by generating all but 10% of its power from hydroelectric sources. Second, BC also has large reserves of natural gas and, being next door to Alberta, another large source of natural gas, makes investing in wind less attractive.

Third, a 2002 provincial Energy Plan barred BC Hydro from developing wind and other new generation. While it created various incentives for private interests to build and operate wind farms and other renewable sources -- giving wind developers a strong incentive to bid on the type of long-term Energy Purchase Agreements that make a project viable -- the provincial utility regulator cast a cloud on the most recent round of bids when it rejected BC Hydro's long-term acquisition plan that called for purchase of up to 3,000 GWh/year from renewable sources. Apparently the utility will go back to the drawing board and re-submit its plan, but that doesn't help wind developers who were waiting for approval of the plan to move forward on contracts. Paradoxically, in the same decision the utilities commissioner approved BC Hydro's plan to spend CDN $140M to upgrade a natural-gas fired plant near Fort Nelson and CDN $1.6M to ensure the reliability of the Burrard Thermal Generation gas-fired plant at Port Moody, near Vancouver, B.C.

Consequently, with such mixed signals, its no wonder that wind power generation hasn't taken hold in B.C. and the forecast looks like continued strong headwinds.