WhyShouldThePublicPayFor
PrivateProfitsVille
The dismantling of the BC Liberal perpetual chronification machine has begun.
And, in my opinion at least, one of the most egregious and malevolent flywheels in this machine is the guaranteed, locked-in contracts that have been handed out to our fine province's 'Independent Power Producers' (IPP's).
The new government has taken the first steps to ending this, as reported earlier this week by Andrew Macleod in the Tyee:
Buried in the British Columbia budget update this week was a major change for independent power producers who sell electricity to BC Hydro.
According to the utility’s service plan, it will cut payments to the private power producers as existing contracts expire.
BC Hydro will be “renewing contracts with independent power producers at prices less than what they are currently paid, recognizing that those producers have typically recovered most of their capital costs over their original contract terms.”
It will also be “reviewing the Standing Offer Program to reflect the declining costs of new power technology,” according to its service plan...
{snip}
The Standing Offer Program, which has suspended new applications according to an Aug. 18 update on BC Hydro’s website, paid between $102.06 and $111.56 per megawatt-hour in 2016. Some of the earlier contracts paid as much as $120 per megawatt-hour, which is significantly more than BC Hydro’s normal cost to produce power, Black said.
According to a BC Hydro spokesperson, power produced using the utility’s heritage assets costs around $32 per megawatt-hour...
So.
How much have IPP's gouged out of our backs so far, mostly for no real good reason at all?
Well...
As Norm Farrell has pointed out over and over and over again.
It is is billions.
With a 'B'.
OK?
.
No the Autobahn doesn’t actually count
1 hour ago
17 comments:
Current contracts need to be reviewed also.Not just renewals.
And keep Burrard Thermal
https://blogborgcollective.blogspot.ca/search?q=ipp
Shut them down. Market price,or they can find another line of work. 4x market is simply ripping off their neighbors. ALL their neighbors.
rIPP-off. Wilson's right. He (and most of the cabinet)are basically unhireable. But,WE dint do that,he did it to himself. Man's an untrustworthy public clown.
BC Hydro owes over $56 billion for power from IPPs.
See P. 5:
http://www.fin.gov.bc.ca/ocg/pa/13_14/Contractual_Obligations.pdf
Seems to me the approach should be to bring truth to the term "independent" in Independent Power Producers.
They should be allowed to sell their output to any customers for whatever price they can negotiate. And BC Hydro should wait until the independent producers have explored their market options without BC Hydro as a customer before negotiating a price.
The BCUC has a lot of catch-up to do after being shooed out of the kitchen by the now-defeated BC Liberals so they could make an unholy mess with, they thought, impunity. The Commission is presently picking its way over stacks of dirty dishes and baked-on pots and pans, strewn about like a bear had got into the camp larder during summer shutdown---and that's just to find the Brillo pads and Bonami so's to get started. And that is just Site-C.
IPPs are buried under more mess than Site-C, and it's several times bigger. It isn't a new revelation: Norm has been all over it for years with analysis of breaches of trust so galling he'd been dismissed as a Casandra. The fare BC Liberals were serving, farmed Balloney-fish, fermented fossil Vegemite a la Frack, and pond-razed Polley tails al cammode, just didn't pass the smell test. The emptied, rat-soiled shelves and gurgling dumpsters reveals why: just cracking the door releases the most nauseating, gaseous curse of pharaohs: may your embalming go wrong.
Unfortunately we can't afford to simply shrink wrap the door shut like a meat-filled freezer discovered too late after the breaker tripped---one week or sixteen years, rotten is rotten. BC Hydro's not something to take to the dump, no matter how revolting the decay, no matter how much the neo-rightists wanted us to beg them to take the disgusting stench away, which was their ultimate goal.
Neither can the mess be simply shovelled into a hazmat bag because it might be a crime scene that has to be investigated forensically. The stench alone warrants it.
Turning off the parasitic IPPs is unlikely to conflict with other lines of forensic investigation.
Hugh: I'd like to know how much of that $56 billion is a "debt obligation" that the public can be absolved of.
Armand: we want less than "market price."
BC used to supply the cheapest, most reliable power in North America and public coffers received annual dividends in the hundreds of millions of dollars. This is what drove the BC Liberals crazy. The neo-right's biggest problem is to convince the voting public that public enterprise is an inefficient drag on the economy while hiding that they really mean it's a drag on their profiteering. That was always going to be difficult with a public enterprise as successful as BC Hydro.
IPP power is so expensive it can't compete in any North American market, much less in jurisdictions with publicly owned electric generation. The measure for us should be that BC Hydro not be forced to buy power that's more expensive than it can make for itself, even if that's below the "market price" in continental terms.
Scotty, Today's government could use a page from WAC Bennett when he expropriated BC Electric and turned it into BC Hydro and Power Authority.
He did that on the eve of the Columbia River Treaty negotiations.
EXPROPRIATE IPP's
@North Van Grumps:
Excellent idea. After all, the only thing independent about them is the profit. So why not?
SH:
A magnum opus Scotty.
After that surgical takedown, I hope the players in Victoria who's ears aren't burning, and bowels aren't turning to liquid, are sharpening their scalpels...
@Scotty on Denman et al:
Power Development Story in British Columbia by W.A.C. Bennett September 16, 1961 Delivered to the Associate Boards of Trade Central British Columbia at Prince George
Page 3 of 16:
... in 1953 with the Kaiser interests of the United States, and to this day I will gladly defend it as a marvelous arrangement for the people of British Columbia.
Here is what that arrangement involved:
It required the Kaiser company to engineer, construct and maintain FOREVER the storage facilities needed to develop the Columbia River, at a cost to British Columbia of not one penny. British Columbia provided the water and the sites of the dams; British Columbia was to receive in return 20 percent of all the additional power developed. Related to the present Columbia Treaty, which provides for Canada to receive 20 percent of the so-called "downstream benefits", this meant that British Columbia was to receive 40 percent of Canada's 50 percent, at at no cost to us.
Has CC been obsessed with power her entire adult life.? Now it has finally slipped from her hands, and, like some deposed monarch or disgraced CEO, can she only see a conspiracy behind her downfall.?
From the Tyee article:
"According to a BC Hydro spokesperson, power produced using the utility’s heritage assets costs around $32 per megawatt-hour, while the average cost of energy from independent producers is around $100 per megawatt-hour. BC Hydro’s basic residential rate is $85.80 per megawatt-hour, meaning it’s losing money on the power it buys from IPPs."
BC Hydro is losing money on the power it buys from IPPs.!!!!!!!!!!
From the Tyee article:
Green Leader Weaver said he hadn’t had a chance to look at the BC Hydro service plan, but that he expects the price for power from independent producers to drop. “I don’t think we’ll ever see those outrageous contracts....
OUTRAGEOUS CONTRACTS!!!???
So BC Hydro has been losing money on outrageous IPP contracts. WTF?
I hope the present Government will go after the former Govt with vengeance also investigate the ministers and upon evidence make sure the crown and the R.C.M.P.lay the appropriate charges against all involved, including corporations & C.E.O.s
Hugh--
Losing money hand over fist.
From the beginning.
.
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