Manitoba Hydro - Page 5

FactaNV · #81 Posted **Jul 10, 2024, 2:57 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ozabald

MB Hydro should look at models such as Fortis in Newfoundland and Emera in Nova Scotia; two provinces where the private sector play a major role in the electric power generation and distribution.

Theyre 50% more expensive with worse service than what Manitoba has. No thanks.

Ozabald · #82 Posted **Jul 10, 2024, 4:43 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by FactaNV

Theyre 50% more expensive with worse service than what Manitoba has. No thanks.

Do you have data to support this assertion?

drew · #83 Posted **Jul 10, 2024, 4:45 PM**

^ you brought it up originally. Onus should be on you to provide the data to show why MB Hydro should follow their private/public model.

FactaNV · #84 Posted **Jul 10, 2024, 4:56 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ozabald

Do you have data to support this assertion?

RE prices: google is your friend.

RE quality: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sour...f0d6rkr533nW3x

Manitoba had a tenth the number of people affected by outages in the sample timeline with more customers, vastly greater transmission distances and complexity and did it 50% cheaper.

It's not the best source material but let's see what you can produce. I suspect nothing to show that MB Hydro is worse than what they have on the East Coast.

bodaggin · #85 Posted **Jul 10, 2024, 5:22 PM**

Private or Public. Manitoba has the following untapped natural generation:

4GW - Hydro
3-5GW - Lake MB Wind (shallow = cheapest)
15-30GW - Lake Wpg Wind (deeper = more expensive)
2GW - Pumped Hydro Cedar Lake to Lake Wpg

That's 25-40GW of untapped, viable generation. On top of our current 6.5GW production. Private or public, it just needs building. Adding a private middle man, only to strangle them with regulation and hoops defeats the point.

Further. MB Hydro can become a Norwegian wealth fund style boon to Gov MB, capitalizing on the massive electric revolution. Publicly owned. It just needs to be properly managed. This is how MB gets off the $3-4B HST teet and becomes a HAVE province.

All the Due Diligence and rough numbers are included in this thread. New CEO Allan Danroth can spend 2hrs reading and have 3yrs worth of work complete. Do it.

borkborkbork · #86 Posted **Jul 10, 2024, 6:08 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by bodaggin

Further. MB Hydro can become a Norwegian wealth fund style boon to Gov MB, capitalizing on the massive electric revolution. Publicly owned. It just needs to be properly managed.

If my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a wagon

I think Hydro should remain public because I'm sure privatization would be a boondoggle, but Hydro's culture, struture, governance, etc. seems unfixably broken.

(Hilariously revealing little line from the story about the CEO's appointment was that he hasn't been able to meet his senior leadership team yet because it's summer so everyone's on vacation)

bodaggin · #87 Posted **Jul 10, 2024, 6:17 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by borkborkbork

I think Hydro seems unfixably broken.

(Hilariously the CEO's hasn't been able to meet his senior leadership team yet because everyone's on vacation)

You're spot on about all. Gotta set the tone. Everyone is coming back to work now or they can have a permanent vacation. Cut the rot. There's a LOT. You're the leader now. That's about the only good thing about bringing in an outsider CEO than hiring them from within: Fresh eyes. Huge learning curve for an outsider though.

bomberjet · #88 Posted **Jul 10, 2024, 6:19 PM**

Half my team is on vacation right now. It's summer in Winnipeg.

Winnipegger · #89 Posted **Jul 10, 2024, 6:43 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by bodaggin

That's 25-40GW of untapped, viable generation. On top of our current 6.5GW production. Private or public, it just needs building. Adding a private middle man, only to strangle them with regulation and hoops defeats the point.

Further. MB Hydro can become a Norwegian wealth fund style boon to Gov MB, capitalizing on the massive electric revolution. Publicly owned. It just needs to be properly managed. This is how MB gets off the $3-4B HST teet and becomes a HAVE province.

What are you on? Which one of our neighbors that we currently export to is going to buy 25 to 40GW of electricity so we can start up our own so-called "Norwegian wealth fund"? Electricity exports are much different than oil, you can't just bottle it up and send it on a ship or pipeline half way across the world to where it is in demand. Electrical grids are a lot more complex and more expensive to run and maintain than a pipeline or fleet of oil tankers.

People act like if we just built more dams we could export all that electricity. If you aggregate all the generation and export data back to 2008, Manitoba's export receipts to the US and other provinces total 3.1% of total electricity generated here. Do you really think we'd be able to make our own "wealth fund" here in the province by just cranking up generation capacity and selling it? I don't think so, other jurisdictions also want to invest in generating their own electricity. And before people scream "yeah by hydro is GREEEEEEEN!" well, the US (our main buyer) is making great progress on renewable and green generating capacity, so it's sort of a moot point.

Don't get me wrong, our crown utility is an important piece of Manitoba's economy, and proper management will be important to sustain low electricity rates which will make us competitive for attracting business. But it is not, and never will be the silver bullet to making us a "have" province. We will never export enough electricity to make some sort of imagined "sovereign wealth fund" that other oil-exporting countries have the privileged of enjoying.

bodaggin · #90 Posted **Jul 10, 2024, 6:48 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Winnipegger

What are you on?

I'm on facts. I will redirect you to the start of the thread with my study on the neighboring energy markets to Manitoba. They're expensive. They're dirty. They're maxed out.

Are you not seeing AB's grid outages? Just another this week. That's money for us.

drew · #91 Posted **Jul 10, 2024, 7:04 PM**

It's groundhog day

bodaggin · #92 Posted **Jul 10, 2024, 7:07 PM**

This was Alberta's wholesale electric rates during the recent grid outage. They spiked over $0.80/kw. Almost $1 per kw. Our rates are $0.09/kw. These events are only going to get more frequent as grids overload. Selling into them creates massive revenue for us in MB.

wags_in_the_peg · #93 Posted **Jul 10, 2024, 7:19 PM**

100% agree, our hydro should be replacing all those Provinces & States reliance on dirty coal. sell, sell, sell and send the profit, profit, profit to the MB residents

FactaNV · #94 Posted **Jul 10, 2024, 8:01 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by bodaggin

This was Alberta's wholesale electric rates during the recent grid outage. They spiked over $0.80/kw. Almost $1 per kw. Our rates are $0.09/kw. These events are only going to get more frequent as grids overload. Selling into them creates massive revenue for us in MB.

The biggest problem with Alberta buying MB I can foresee is loss due to the distance. I wonder if the math supports such a distance via transmission. I wonder if it would be possible to route lines from the dams West to Flin Flon (ish) and then on to Sask/AB. That's a shit ton of money on new lines in tough terrain though.

borkborkbork · #95 Posted **Jul 10, 2024, 8:04 PM**

Could a (hypothetically innovative) MB Hydro subsidize distributed storage somehow, e.g. battery storage systems? It could increase the stability/reliability of the system and improve Hydro's export capacity during peak demand times/seasons...

bodaggin · #96 Posted **Jul 10, 2024, 8:12 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by FactaNV

The biggest problem with Alberta buying MB I can foresee is loss due to the distance. I wonder if the math supports such a distance via transmission. I wonder if it would be possible to route lines from the dams West to Flin Flon (ish) and then on to Sask/AB. That's a shit ton of money on new lines in tough terrain though.

Xlinks, the 11.5gw Moroccan/UK solar project is building a 4,000km transmission line. Carrying 3.5gw. So energy losses from transmission are heavily overblown. I wouldn't suggest building 4,000km line everywhere, but 500-1,500km are nothing. At least when they're not mismanaged like Bi-pole was.

HOWEVER: That Bi-Pole 3 mistake of choosing the west route, may turn into a great opportunity on the SK/AB export front. Now we have 2gw of transmission sitting right on SK's border to plug into. They're already building off of it with the Birtle Transmission line too. But these are itty bitty solutions. We need to think vastly bigger.

bodaggin · #97 Posted **Jul 10, 2024, 8:23 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by borkborkbork

Could a (hypothetically innovative) MB Hydro subsidize distributed storage somehow, e.g. battery storage systems? It could increase the stability/reliability of the system and improve Hydro's export capacity during peak demand times/seasons...

Vehicle-To-Grid is coming with the EV transition. So grid storage is not going to be nearly as big of an issue as people think. Pumped-Hydro Storage (which we're perfectly set up for on Cedar Lake) is a great utility scale balancer. See page 1 and 2 of this thread. I explained PSH and the numbers of a Cedar Lake PSH project. Which MB Hydro likely has no idea is even a thing.

But we can only move watts around in circles so much. We need generation.

Generate. Generate. Generate. No one else has a 4,000sqkm of shallow bottom Lake Manitoba with excellent wind coverage and NO LAND ACQUISITION hurdles. Land acquisition is a huge hurdle in wind. We can rubber stamp and build. Fast, cheap, minimal transmission cost. Average wind farm build times are 1-3yrs. We have huge competitive advantage here.

bodaggin · #98 Posted **Jul 10, 2024, 8:44 PM**

Check this out. Lake MB's wind farm could fully reuse Bipole 3 for export allowing FOUR gigawatts of export capacity by cut/splitting into the line and redirecting it. Effectively using it twice, due to Lake MB's location. Zero added transmission up to SK's border.

I'm a freaking genius. Invoice is in the mail MB Hydro!

Ozabald · #99 Posted **Jul 10, 2024, 8:58 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by bodaggin

This was Alberta's wholesale electric rates during the recent grid outage. They spiked over $0.80/kw. Almost $1 per kw. Our rates are $0.09/kw. These events are only going to get more frequent as grids overload. Selling into them creates massive revenue for us in MB.

Did you not think that BC's already there? Selling its hydro to AB. BC's electrical grid has been connected to Alberta's for over 30 years. There are three connecting lines: two 138 kV lines and one 500 kV line which connect BC to Alberta.

bodaggin · #**100** Posted **Jul 10, 2024, 9:55 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ozabald

Did you not think that BC's already there? Selling its hydro to AB. BC's electrical grid has been connected to Alberta's for over 30 years. There are three connecting lines: two 138 kV lines and one 500 kV line which connect BC to Alberta.

It's not enough or their grid wouldn't keep crashing.

It crashed what, 3x now in the last 6mths? AB + SK could eat 4gw without blinking. They have 17gw of dirty energy between them after all. That's just at current demand. Grids need to double in supply. He who acts first gets the pie. Let it be us.