What is wrong with the status quo?

What is wrong with the status quo??

If anyone has read this article written by economist Jeff Rubin? http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/front/article/908518

Or seen the Shawn Graham interview with Terry Seguin on the CBC?
http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/News/Canada/NB/ID=1379331595

Do you beleive what you see? Do any reporters have the ability to do some significant research? (and I'm not refering to Terry Seguin)
Do politians have the ability to talk without doublespeak? Check this out to see how completely dependent NB Power is on oil pricing and supply volatility.

http://www.nbpower.com/html/en/about/publications/sustainability/supplementarydocuments/StatisticalOverview_English_Nov%2019.pdf see page three

Oil (and orimulsion combined) as a percentage of provincial net generation and purchases for the last 5 years is 23%, 16%, 17%, 20% and 23% respectively.

Oil only, while Dalhousie was still on Orimulsion, was 10% for 2005 and 13% for 2004.

Now that the industrial load has droppped off, and orimulsion is gone, once lepreau is back, oil load for the province should be next to zero. Especially if you calculate the numbers with a 14 TW cap on the heritage pool. as proposed in the MOU.

When Lepreau is back to full load, and they generate at at least historical rates (4.1 Tw / year) in province electricity supply should be about 29% nuclear, 23% hydro, 25% coal, and the rest from purchases. Purchases are currently about 30%. All totalled, there seems to be a surplus, because I can add it up to 107%. So coal generaton, or purchases will be down a few percent. Not much dependency on oil. Even dependency on coal could drop to less than 20%.

Nuff said???

Actually, I have more. Lets look at this from another angle. Where is Quebec going to profit from the good citizens of NB. They will run the nuclear station. Right ? Status Quo there. They will run the hydro stations. Right? Status Quo there. Any refurbishment at Mactaquac in 15 or 20 years will be added to NB Power rates. And don't think otherwise? Who else would pay? Quebec residents? No. Quebec Government? Why would they do that? They'll dump the money in Quebec first. Government of NB maybe? Well then there is no reason to sell NB Power. What about purchased power from independent power producers. Any reason for anything except Status Quo there? This includes natural gas generation. Lots of natural gas in the Maritimes. http://www.soep.com/cgi-bin/getpage?pageid=1/0/0 and http://www.gnb.ca/0078/Minerals/pdf/McCully_Gas_Field_Projecte.pdf
No foreign oil imports there. Wind Power. Lots of that. In fact, more to come. Free fuel forever there! Biomass generator at Frasers. Lots of trees in NB. Status Quo there. Hydro station at St George. And gas turbine at Grandview in Irvings backyard. Do they use this themselvles, or sell it on the grid? http://www.transcanada.com/pdf/power/grandview.pdf Doesn't matter does it. Just more in province generation that won't likely change. That just leaves the other 18% to 25% generated at Belledune from coal and petcoke. We just shutdown a 300 year old coal mine in Grand Lake. http://dailygleaner.canadaeast.com/cityregion/article/911216 About time for that eh!! A mine that has supplied Grand Lake, Dalhousie, and Belledune. The US has 120 plus years of coal reserves for it's coal fired fleet of generators that produce over 40% of the electricity required. http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/tablees1a.html I also seen elsewhere where over 50% of US electrical supply is from coal sourced generation.

And I'm sorry, but I don't think there is enough water in Quebec to fill that gap in electricity supply to the states and shut down all those coal fired generators. So where would the profit come from? TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION silly. That's where it comes from in PEI, NS, NL, Bangor Hydro, even Quebec. Well maybe not Quebec. They just pillaged and plundered Churchil Falls for $0.25 per megwatt hour and sell it in their own heritage pool at $28. Lots of generation profit there. 1.7 Billion in profits and 63 million paid back to NL last year. Well, technically maybe it is a transmision profit. But anyway, back to the transmission and distribution profits. Why would I make that assumption? Well, check out our neighbours.

Here is a summary:

In PEI Fortis owns Maritime Electric and makes money from the Distribution of electricity obtained from NB Power. Most new wind power is sold to NY.

In NS Emera owns NS Power and makes money from the generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity. The electricity and self generated from coal (75%)and hydro.

In NL Fortis Group owns Newfoundland Power and makes money from the Transmission and distribution of electricty obtained from the Crown owned Newfoundland Hydro. Newfoundland Hydro is Crown owned and provides over 93% of the electricity in NL from Hydro power.

http://www.nr.gov.nl.ca/mines&en/industry/overview.stm

In NB, NB Power is Crown owned and NB Power makes money from the Generating,
transmission and Distribution of electricty. The sources are from self generation from nuclear, hydro, coal, oil, wind, and purchases from biomass and natural gas generators.

As you can see, the privately owned, and profitable area in each of the other Atlantic provinces is the TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION system within the province. The crown corporation Newfoundland Hydro, supplies over 90% of the power that is sold in Newfoundland through the privately run Newfoundland Power. NF Power has little to no risk in the generation of electricity. As long as the markup on purchases is sufficient to cover expenses, with a fixed rate of return, you're in business. PEI is the same. They have some small deisel and bunker generators that rarely run. Why bother when you can get all the power from the mainland. Let NB Power worry about the capital cost and risk of a generation sytem. MaritimeElectric just buys, marks up, and sells. I grew up in PEI at the tail end of a local distribution system. Having no power after a winter storm for three days was routine. Our house was well equipped to deal with it. We didn't go without a hot meal or a hot shower just because the power was out. It been better the past few years, but my parents have an even bigger generator now. So basically, Maritime Electric service is there, but it has it's bad days. I've been living in New Brunswick for 20 odd years, and don't recall the power been out in my area for more than a couple of hours, and rarely, if ever, on a windy stormy winter day.

Emera also own Bangor Hydro in Maine. They provide transmission and distribution to over 110,000 people in Northeastern Maine. It appears they have no Generation capability. They get a guaranteed return on equity of 11.5%. On the downside, if you read this report you can see the reliability issues they have to contend with. http://www.bhe.com/data/pdf/BHE%20Local%20System%20Needs%20and%20Alternatives.pdf

Emera also recently acquired the 260 MW Bayside power station in Saint John. A former NB Power facility leased out to a private interest many years ago to develope a natural gas fired combined cycle unit.

Even the town of Sumerside is trying to ween itself off of Maritime Electric by Purchasing a portion of the wind power generated at West Cape, PEI.

So the people are right in being outraged that the current government would consider selling NB Power. Especially the part that has less risk, and a basically profitable, guaranteed rate of return.

Plus, as we all know, NB Power has spent considerable time and money developing interchanges will all it's neighbours. NB Power has nearly as many interprovincial, and US connections as does Hydro Quebec, and it's only one tenth the size. See the earlier side by side comparison I did.

This doesn't even include the options available to HQ by getting the transmision system into Maine. And they get to control the NS open access grid. http://oasis.nspower.ca/en/home/oasis/default.aspx In an earlier post I explained that they get their hands on PEI's grid.

So Folks, tell me please, becasue I can't figure it out. How the hell can selling NB Power be good for NB? And nothing but obscenley profitable for HQ?

For the next 20 to 30 years, what needs to change? Why not just sit back, relax, and pay off the debt. All new generation will come from the open market. Right? That's what the MOU is telling HQ to do. NB Power does it now. Why not keep the T&D profits.

And on a side note, if you want to get Hydro Quebec rates, but not move there, call NS power. They have a demand metering system with rates compararble to HQ's. They will even finance your heat pump and ETS device to allow you to drop your rates by nearly 50%.

http://www.nspower.ca/en/home/residential/homeheatingproducts/default.aspx

I don't know about you guys, but I feel ill.