Posted on 05/26/2011 10:54:27 AM PDT by thackney
A combined power deal between Minnesota and Wisconsin will kick off the construction of a new dam in northern Manitoba.
The deal is worth $4 billion and will see Manitoba Hydro sell 475 megawatts southward starting in 2015.
To meet that demand Hydro will have to build the $5.6-billion Keeyask Generation Station on the lower Nelson River 175 kilometres northeast of Thompson.
“This is the largest dollar sale of exports that we’ve had in the history of Manitoba Hydro in absolute dollar terms,” Premier Greg Selinger said Wednesday. “We like to think of it as Manitoba’s oil, but more sustainable and certainly greener.”
Selinger also said Hydro continues to work on another export power sales to Wisconsin.
If that 500-megawatt deal happens, it would lead to the construction of the Conawapa Generating Station.
The new agreements still need regulatory approval.
Last year Manitoba Hydro signed a deal worth $3 billion to sell between 375 and 500 megawatts to Xcel Energy of Minneapolis for 10 years starting in 2015.
The Minnesota Power deal comes as Manitoba’s Public Utilities Board weighs the risks of Hydro spending $20 billion over the next decade to build the Keeyask and Conawapa stations on the upper Nelson River and the Bipole III transmission line.
The two facilities would add another 1,930 megawatts of electricity to Hydro’s system to use in the growing domestic market and to export to Minnesota and also Wisconsin. Hydro’s new $1.3 billion Wuskwatim project on the Burntwood River is to generate 200 megawatts starting next year.
The new deal also calls for the inclusion of a “wind storage” provision that allows Minnesota Power to transmit electric energy northward from its wind farms in North Dakota when wind production is high or electric loads are low.
When Minnesota Power transmits power northward, Manitoba Hydro will absorb it into its system, storing it like a “rechargeable battery.”
So Canada is building dams and we are building wind mills. It will be interesting to see how much wind power is exactly exported to Canada for pump storage. I bet the Canadian’s accepted that deal because they know that there will be very little of it. Keeping wind mills running in the frozen north isn’t easy. You got to keep them heated when the wind doesn’t blow. When the wind blows to hard..or ice formss..you gotta stop them. The net output will be very low. From a personal point of view, investing in Canadian oil resources or just the EWC is a good bet. They have pursued oil sands, offshore oil, artic oil and gas and pipelines to get it to us. They will get rich off our $4 gas.
They already ARE getting rich off of $4 gas. Alberta is booming. Fort MacMurray has become an overnight boom town of 60,000.
Good for them as they have had the common sense to tell their enviro-agitators to take a hike and are developing their own energy resources.
LOL
Muast be nice to be in Canada. IF we tried to build a dam here in AK, we would be up to our armpits in lawyers and ‘activists’ trying to stop the permiting, let alone actually building the thing.
My grandkids are doomed......
You don’t believe the Susitna dam will go through?
****IF we tried to build a dam here in AK, *****
Wasn’t there a plan, years ago, to build a huge one on the Yukon river or the one at Fairbanks? I remember reading that the lake formed would be HUGE!
So it was abandoned.
Perhaps you are thinking of the Susitna?
This project has been proposed and rejected many times going back to the 1940s.
http://enr.construction.com/news/powerIndus/archives/080611.asp
Perhaps you are thinking of the Susitna?
This project has been proposed and rejected many times going back to the 1940s.
http://enr.construction.com/news/powerIndus/archives/080611.asp
Not in anybodies lifetime. I don’t even see why it is being considered.
The Chakachamna projects make musch more sense.
It could replace the gas-fired Beliga plant (which is getting old) (330MW), NO DAM, and the hyfro plant would only be 50 miles from the existing feed to the railbelt, avoiding the cost of all new infrastructure.
TDX has already loked at the site and has recommendations.
The fight will be between Big Coal (or at least alaska big coal) vs hydro.
Had the State issued permits, construction would be underway now......
Green Peace
Serria Club
Center for (no development in AK) bio-diversity...
You know - the usual supects.
Enviros exist in spades in Canada but maybe the legal system is less inclined to accomodate them.
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