Chase Energy Canada Limited

Keephills#2 went offline at 13:00 Friday; Sundance#5 went offline at 21:01 Friday; HR Milner went offline at 06:50 andf back on at 09:44 Saturday.

Building two north-south power lines will help Atco Power’s plan to build large hydro projects on two northern Alberta rivers to replace aging coal-fired electricity plants. Old coal plants are being phased out to meet new federal greenhouse-gas regulations and the company hopes to replace them with hydro, natural gas and more cogeneration. The company has completed soil testing and other technical work on the two sites on the Athabasca River and is also looking at an 800 megawatt plant on the Slave River though the project is on hold after an area aboriginal band opposed hydro development. The company was “shocked” when hydro power was not included in the AESO’s recent forecast for electricity generation for the base load. Atco said that converting older coal plants to natural gas will still not meet current federal greenhouse-gas standards, which makes large-scale hydro projects attractive.

Industrial and commercial power consumers urged provincial regulators to let them intervene before ruling on how much Trans Alta Corp. should pay for gaming Alberta’s electricity market. The groups argued to the Alberta Utilities Commission they should be able to present evidence about the effect of the November 2010 incidents that resulted in inflated provincial electricity prices.

Direct Energy is cutting 500 jobs in Canada as the company shifts its headquarters from Toronto to Houston in order to concentrate on key growth markets in the northeastern United States and Texas. In total, Direct Energy, one of North America’s largest energy and energy-related services providers, will still have about 2,000 employees in Ontario and roughly 6,000 across North America.

The battle over new north-south power lines Thursday saw Edmonton-owned Epcor Utilities up against industrial power consumers worried the proposed $4-billion expansion will push electricity rates too high and force some to leave the province – forestry companies told the panel to delay approval until a public hearing is held to assess the need for two new 500-kilovolt, DC lines, especially with new power plants opening in the south. As power rates rise, big users such as Alberta Newsprint Company and others will build generation capacity on-site rather than rely on the grid. That needs to be taken into account when AESO makes its estimate on the need for expanded transmission.

For almost two full days this week, there was no jet engine-like roar from the massive furnace, no crackle of melting scrap metal and no sirens indicating red hot liquid steel was about to pour into the ladle below at AltaSteel’s east Edmonton mill. Industrial and commercial users account for nearly 85 per cent of demand for electricity in the province. For industrial electricity consumers who aren’t on a fixed-rate contract in this deregulated electricity market, those hourly price fluctuations are serious business. While residential electricity bills are calculated based on a monthly rate, industrial users are metered and billed hourly. Workers remain on-site and are paid to tend to other duties as they wait for prices to dip low enough to restart the plants. This week’s shutdowns were not the first for AltaSteel. Knights said the plant loses some hours each month because of high electricity prices, typically in the afternoon when people get home. A fixed-price contract is not an option for AltaSteel because those prices are prohibitive.

The province should be “upfront with consumers” if it wants to build new transmission lines large enough for exports of electricity and explain how they will benefit users; the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association told a hearing on Wednesday. The north-south grid is the “back-bone” of Alberta transmission, there is a lot of concern about who is paying for the proposed new lines and whether two lines are needed. “The elephant in the room is: Do you need the power or not?” Quebec exports a lot of electricity to the United States and uses the money to pay for the debt acquired in building the expanded hydroelectric system. But that’s not the case in Alberta, where the cost of new lines is paid upfront by consumers. Others also questioned the need for “unfettered transmission,” which is the goal of the Alberta Electric Systems Operator in proposing the two new lines. Joe Anglin, representing landowners on the north-south corridor, told the panel there is no requirement in legislation for the AESO to build that kind of transmission capacity. Rather, the legislation requires “reliable and economic operation of the system,” not zero congestion.

An environmental group asserts that the federal government greatly underestimates the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that are produced by hydro electric facilities. A report issued by the Global Forest Watch concludes that the difference between emissions produced by fossil fuels and hydro electricity is not as great as was previously thought. The study concludes that the real quantity of hydro electric greenhouse gas emissions is between seven and 13 megatonnes of carbon dioxide. Most of these greenhouse gases are emitted in Quebec.

Nearly all presenters to date have opposed the transmission expansion and the way it was approved – and that trend is expected to continue when the hearings move to Edmonton today. So far only TransAlta, which owns coal-fired plants west of Edmonton, has supported the project at the hearings, saying investment in new coal-fired power generation may not come if the lines aren’t built.

Health Canada is drafting national guidelines for electricity-generating wind turbines that will establish a recommended minimum safe distance between the structures and homes. Across Canada many are concerned about “wind turbine syndrome,” a suite of symptoms suffered by some living in close proximity to wind turbines. Anxiety, sleeping problems and headaches are among the negative health effects some think are caused by the low frequency hum emitted by wind turbines. The voluntary draft guidelines are health-based, and focus on minimizing potential impacts such as sleep disturbance by recommending noise limits, sound measurement standards and minimum setback distances from homes and occupied dwellings.

Toronto Hydro-Electric System Limited reports that power has been restored to the building at 33 Princess Street as of 4:05 p.m. this afternoon. The outage was a result of a vault fire in the downtown area yesterday at 1:45 p.m. that interrupted power to customers in the area bounded by North – Queen Street E; East – Sumach/Cherry; South – Front Street East and West – Sherbourne Street.

Starting in 2013, Nanaimo Forest Products Ltd. will be generating and selling clean power to BC Hydro. Under its Integrated Power Offer, BC Hydro has signed a 15-year electricity purchase agreement with Nanaimo Forest Products Ltd. to purchase clean energy from a new 25 megawatt turbo-generation unit that is being constructed at the Harmac Pacific pulp mill located just south of Nanaimo, B.C.

Keephills#1 went offline at 22:29 and HR Milner went offline at 23:56. Expect AESO prices to be much higher today – in addition to losing these two units, the troublesome AESO Merit Order also has some huge changes today with only 70MW offered between $200 and $900(441MW yesterday) and 1684MW offered at $900 or higher(1179MW yesterday). Demand hit 10,609 megawatts at 6 p.m. yesterday breaking the record of 10,315 MW set one day earlier. AESO’s short term outage chart suggests we should get Keephills back tomorrow. There was 2.7bcf of natural gas was removed from storage yesterday.

ATCO and AltaLink have already spent about $200 million – money consumers could ultimately be on the hook for – on two proposed Edmonton-Calgary transmission lines that are now under review, according to Alberta Energy. The ministry has requested the two builders and operators of the respective lines to stop spending on the $3 billion project until a Critical Trans-mission Review Committee appointed by the premier reports Feb. 10. The companies are authorized to spend money to prepare for the construction of the lines, but the ministry has asked them to refrain from making unnecessary expenditures until a final decision is made. IPCAA executive director Sheldon Fulton filed a letter with the Alberta Utilities Commission at the end of November urging it to step in after the companies filed documents with the Transmission Facilities Cost Monitoring Committee showing they had already committed to spending more than $932 million. Fulton and other stake-holders complain the costs are not known until after they have been incurred and then there is a hearing after the fact to determine if they are justifiable and whether consumers should pay for the full amount.

Genesee#3 came back online at 03:56 Sunday.

Alberta set a new record in electricity demand during the 6 o’clock hour Sunday night – 10,315MW, topping the previous record of 10,236MW set back on December 14th, 2009. Albertans are being asked to run things like washers, dryers and dishwashers during non-peak hours after 7 pm. AESO’s forecasts indicate that over the next 20 years, more than 11,000MW of new generation is needed to replace retiring generation plants that reach the end of their operating lives as well as keep up with anticipated load growth.

In 2003, the Conservative government Redford now leads changed a 50-50 funding deal that applied to power generators and saddled ratepayers with the entire bill for construction of new power lines. In February 2009, the Alberta government eliminated a requirement for public needs assessments, and public hearings, on five major electricity transmission lines by deeming them all “critical infrastructure” for the fast growing province. The price tag for Northern Gateway is $5.5 billion, while the cost of the Keystone XL pipeline is $7 billion. The power lines proposed from Edmonton to Calgary will cost $4 billion, part of a broader $13.5-billion electricity infrastructure build. Keeping pace with demand for electricity is a big challenge for governments. It is a complex and critically important business.

MDA Earthsat has expanded its wind generation forecast product to include the Alberta Electric System Operator. The Web-based system uses ensemble forecast methods to produce hourly forecasts for lead times of up to 10 days.

Enmax Corp. argued the dual high voltage direct current lines being pushed by the Alberta government as critical would be redundant in the province’s new energy landscape. More megawatts of power are being produced south of Red Deer and less in the north, reducing the need for lines which were planned to flow electricity to the Calgary region. Enmax is building an 800-mega-watt natural gas-fired power plant on the southeastern border of Calgary, expected to come online by 2015. The plant will have a significant impact on the provincial transmission sys-tem by reducing north-south flows. Enmax noted nuclear and hydroelectric plants proposed in north-central Alberta have been shelved, and that new coal-fired generation is unlikely because of federal carbon reduction legislation. He called for sections of Bill 50 on critical transmission to be repealed, leaving decisions on need to experts and allowing for public intervention. TransAlta Corp., the province’s largest power generator, argued the high cost of a 500kv line was justified by allowing more power to move across Alberta. TransAlta sup-ported AltaLink’s proposed 300km line between generation west of Edmonton and Strathmore, just east of Calgary. The line would be a shorter and more direct line to Calgary than Atco Ltd.’s 500km eastern line from the Gibbons and Redwater area northeast of Edmonton to the Brooks area southeast of Calgary…A report released Wednesday by the C.D. Howe Institute says Newfoundland and Labrador should delay its plans to develop the Muskrat Falls hydroelectric project – the provincial government should first reform regulations that he says support excessive power consumption.

Political and regulatory uncertainty around Alberta’s electricity market poses risks for companies considering investing in the province – if TransCanada Corp. were assured Alberta’s market design would remain the same for the next 20 years, the Calgary pipeline and energy company would approach building more generation with confidence. TransCanada, which is contemplating a $500-million, 350-megawatt natural gas power plant outside of High River, agreed Alberta needs to build up its transmission. But the company noted a number of factors have changed since the grid operator planned the transmission projects, from lower natural gas prices to additional on-site industrial generation. New developments could reduce the stress on the existing north-south lines for several years. Wind energy is playing an increasingly important role in meeting Ontario’s demand for electricity, according to the Independent Electricity System Operator’s annual release of supply, demand and price data. Total wind energy production rang in at 3.9 terawatt hours TWh – up substantially from 2.8 TWh in 2010. November 2011 marked the highest monthly wind output ever seen in Ontario, with production in that month alone exceeding 0.56 TWh. In annual terms, wind generation represented 2.6 per cent of total output across all fuel types of 149.9 TWh. A record level of new wind energy projects were commissioned in both Canada and Ontario in 2011. In 2011, new wind energy projects were built and commissioned in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. More than 5,000 MW of wind energy projects are already contracted to be built over the next five years.

The construction of two multibillion dollar power lines between Edmonton and Calgary would be too much too soon, Capital Power said during the first day of public comment on the projects. The Edmonton-based generator, which controls 10 per cent of Alberta’s marketed power, told a review panel in Calgary it was unlikely the province would require as much transmission as the two high voltage, direct current power lines would provide. The Alberta Electric System Operator predicts demand for electricity will nearly double within 20 years, and that 13,000 megawatts of new generation will be required to meet those needs. Concern is also mounting about a possible shutdown of the province’s aging coal-fired plants in 2020 when current contracts under PPA expire. The plants — 11 whose PPAs expire Dec. 31, 2020 — currently supply 4,300 MW of power, or more than 40 per cent of the province’s electricity, and could still represent nearly a third of the province’s supply by 2020. In addition to concerns about low power supply and high electricity prices, consumers will also have to pay the cost of decommissioning plants and reclaiming their sites if they close when the PPAs expire – power companies that own the plants will be on the hook for the full costs if they continue to operate after 2020. If that isn’t incentive enough for power companies to mothball their plants, federal rules limiting the life of such facilities to 45 years and requiring them to upgrade the plants to meet stringent rules for greenhouse gas and other emissions could also come into play. The Brattle Group advises Alberta raise the cap on the hourly electricity market price to $3,000 per megawatt from current $1,000, and giving electrical generators more time to decide whether they want to continue operating past 2020. Power plant operators currently have to indicate one year before the expiry date whether they will keep running.

Hearings into two controversial transmission line projects will begin in Calgary today and move to Edmonton next week. The projects, the Western Alberta Transmission Line through the Calgary-Edmonton corridor, and the Eastern Alberta Transmission Line from northeast of Edmonton to Brooks, are needed to make Alberta’s power network more reliable and efficient while accommodating long-term growth and encouraging new generation, says the province. Critics maintain the province wants to use the lines to export power to the United States. Landowners, electricity producers, and large and small consumers will make presentations to a review committee in Calgary Jan. 10 – 12, and in Edmonton Jan. 18 – 20. The committee, chaired by Brian Heidecker and includes electricity experts Roy Billinton, Joseph Doucet, and Henry Yip, will provide a report to Minister of Energy Ted Morton by Feb. 10.

It’s tough looking at the AESO Pool price so far this month averaging $25.26/MWh while the NGX flat RRO Price index came in at $124/MWh. Most of the higher price forecast for January was based on Genesee#3 being offline for the first two weeks – some impact that has had. There’s a lot of speculation in the news these days about what the causes are and the questions surrounding transmission. I agree with several views out there that say re-regulation is not the answer but redesign is. It’s been over 10 years since de-regulation began and in the early days everyone played nice – you seldom heard that the MSA was investigating someone. Not so any more. The easiest first move is to get all consumers and generators to balance their own accounts up to 85% – no longer allow “taking” AESO Pool price – this will create a “real” market. Worked great when natural gas was deregulated.