OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
How does one of the poorest provinces in Canada get itself saddled with a $15 billion dollar debt (and climbing!) for a power plant and link that will never be reliable? That's a very good question.
Hydro-Quebec has extensive experience building, operating and providing transmission from large remote hydro-electric facilities. Newfoundland (Nalcor)? Not so much. My understanding is that Hydro-Quebec did offer to be involved in the project but Nalcor, in conjunction with Nova Scotia's Emera, chose to go it alone.
Whoops.
Things got so bad (Newfoundland was going to go bankrupt) that the Federal government had to step-in and bail out the project, so now the rest of Canada is paying for this boondoggle. This was haughtily protested by Hydro-Quebec.
How bad is it? Well, Muskrat Falls is an 874MW hydro-electric dam (the Lower Churchill Project) which is expected to produce ~4.9TWh/year. Current cost is pegged at $15 billion. In comparison, Darlington B was supposed to $24 billion for 2,400MW and around 19.3TWh; roughly 4x the power for less than half the price. A single EC6 CANDU, which could have been constructed for around $6 billion, would produce ~5.6TWh. They could have built TWO of them for what they've spent so far (and had 1,350MW of power), and still have money left over.
It has been 10 years and the project is still plagued with issues, one of the most glaring of which is the unreliability of the transmission infrastructure. The dam is making power, it just can't be reliably delivered to where it needs to go.
This article is a rather scathing takedown of the project, but a worthwhile read:
unclegnarley.ca
Hydro-Quebec has extensive experience building, operating and providing transmission from large remote hydro-electric facilities. Newfoundland (Nalcor)? Not so much. My understanding is that Hydro-Quebec did offer to be involved in the project but Nalcor, in conjunction with Nova Scotia's Emera, chose to go it alone.
Whoops.
Things got so bad (Newfoundland was going to go bankrupt) that the Federal government had to step-in and bail out the project, so now the rest of Canada is paying for this boondoggle. This was haughtily protested by Hydro-Quebec.
How bad is it? Well, Muskrat Falls is an 874MW hydro-electric dam (the Lower Churchill Project) which is expected to produce ~4.9TWh/year. Current cost is pegged at $15 billion. In comparison, Darlington B was supposed to $24 billion for 2,400MW and around 19.3TWh; roughly 4x the power for less than half the price. A single EC6 CANDU, which could have been constructed for around $6 billion, would produce ~5.6TWh. They could have built TWO of them for what they've spent so far (and had 1,350MW of power), and still have money left over.
It has been 10 years and the project is still plagued with issues, one of the most glaring of which is the unreliability of the transmission infrastructure. The dam is making power, it just can't be reliably delivered to where it needs to go.
This article is a rather scathing takedown of the project, but a worthwhile read:
TEN YEARS AFTER MUSKRAT FALLS SANCTION – We will have to think abandonment of the Labrador Island Link - Uncle Gnarley
Put simply, whether Muskrat Falls come online or not, it cannot be relied upon. Without admitting their gross negligence at the start, Hydro is essentially saying that that we should try to salvage Muskrat Falls at an undefined cost and for for however short the duration it might operate.
unclegnarley.ca
