BC's Massive "Site C" Dam gets go ahead
 

This huge project when completed is said to power the equivalent 450 000 homes or 8% of BC's total electricity needs. Also said to be BC's largest infrastructure project ever?! Not sure how to post news releases so if Metro or Cranespotter could help in that regard that would be awesome.

$8.8 billion - that's not cheap! $20,000 per house powered - that seems absurdly high?

Ya im not sure of where all this cost is going. Does seem uber expensive.

10% margin for error given current electricity prices (provided that they need to pay this off in 25 years. Under current prices, they cannot expect to pay it off in 20 years.)

Yeah, that timescale was what I figured it at too. I'm all for hydro power (and whatever, I'm not going to be paying for this anyway!), but when I saw that price tag I was expecting an incredible amount of power, not less than a gigawatt.

I guess if it's got a lifetime of 50+ years the economics would look a lot better.

I thought they mentioned a 100 year lifespan? It is possible as there's a few dams between here and Nelson that are around that old.

Earth fill dam :yuck: And for that price tag :yuck::yuck:

At $8.8 Billion (most recent budget that just jumped...) or nearly $20k per home, I wonder how many other non-polluting options could be built? Wind, solar, run-of-the-river, tidal etc. Lots of options out there. I don't know their respective costs are but I would hope that is part of the business case for this dam being built. Far less long-term costs with a dam I suspect.

Out of the 'green' options this seems like the least to me. You have to flood ridiculous amounts of farmland (a very scarce commodity in BC), build massive hydro lines to distribute then energy, potentially cause severe geological damage (didn't some recent dam projects cause earthquakes?), move residents, remove everything from flood area, piss off the natives that have unsettled land claims in the area etc.

I wonder how much of this being pushed through is really just the feed the energy requirement of LNG terminals. If that's the case, then most of their requirements will likely be met with using natural gas electric generators.

Nothing wrong with earth fill dams as long as the resevoir storage is controlled, and isn't built on top of a fault line. There is a book written about a fictional terrorist event that takes place in BC, the book is called "the wave" ( http://www.randomhouse.com/book/84865/the-wave-by-christopher-hyde ) and it specificly calls out BC's earth fill dams on the Columbia as a disaster in waiting. In the novel, damage to Mica plus a landslide pushes over the dam. The novel was written before Revelstoke dam was built, and obviously before Chernobyl froze most new Nuclear plant plans.

As for BC, geothermal http://www.cangea.ca/bc-geothermal-resource-estimate-maps.html , Wind and Tidal generation are still options.

But do we need it?

Realisticly, for domestic emery use, no. We still have the Columbia river treaty power generation we can call on, as an option. Right now BC just sells it for a pittance to the US. http://blog.gov.bc.ca/columbiarivertreaty/treaty-highlights/

Building it now, the farm land value is of questionable viability (eg it's less valuable than land in Surrey) but, once it's lost, it never comes back. That was one of the huge issues with the land lost by the Columbia river treaty dams. It would almost be worth trucking the top soil to another more viable valley to create new usable farmland.

But in the end, BC's lack of farmland is a direct result of flooding a lot of it for hydroelectric capacity. Deja vu?

I agree. If its built right, inspected constantly we would never see a repeat of the Teton Dam disaster.

Is this a dead river for fish? Or is a fish ladder part of the design?

It is downstream from two other dams, one of which is very large. Compared to the damage already done by the Bennett Dam, this one should be negligible.

The Peace flows into Lake Athabasca, not the Pacific, so it does not have a salmon run.

Bennett is one of the largest earth fill dams in the world and implants one of the largest reservoirs by volume. It required remedial work in the nineties to repair sinkholes.

I wonder why there are no dams on the Alberta side of the Peace. They could benefit from the storage providing by Bennett Dam.

New $400 million wind farm to be built near Tumbler Ridge

New wind farm is going to cost less in capital costs per home powered. $400M to feed 54,000 homes is approximately $7,400 per powered house vs Site C costing $20,000. Yes, operating expenses are likely to be higher with wind versus hydro. I still stand by my opinion that Site-C is a waste of money and there are cheaper clean alternatives.

I think we need both. Cite-C only address part of the incremental growth BC is projected to have. Wind is also needed but variable.

Wind is variable, but if you have enough wind generators in enough different areas would that not resolve the variability issue?

Geothermal has yet to be tapped.

In theory, but you will end up producing way more electricity than you ever will need, and you will still need to build a backup plant (pumped storage or natural gas) unless you're willing to accept the 1% of time when your system produces nothing. Ends up being super expensive.

Today it is expected that Elon Musk is going to announce that his new giga factory will also be producing lithium ion batteries for homes, offices, and industry drastically cutting the cost of having a personal home battery system. This coupled with evermore cheaper solar panels is democratizing the energy grid. SolarCity (Musk is Chairperson) will likely carry the products.

The near-future is not having large centralized power stations with expensive infrastructure to where it is needed. The near-future is to generate the power where you use it with a backup of centralized power.

I really do hope those lawsuits stop Site-C from being built. The dam is too expensive, to risky, and not the right solution for BC. Geothermal, Solar, Wind. All great options!

Certainly for single family homes and less dense distributed generation is the future, at the very least 30 years out.

Site-C road contracts have started going out to tender

BC has embarrassed itself twice now by talking the talk but being unable to walk the walk. Northern Gateway and the LNG export facilities have fizzled. Let's stick to what we know. This is going to be a mega project that actually comes to fruition

A reporter from Dawson Creek today flew over the Site C dam site in a Cessna and took a bunch of pics. In his words... "Stunning what they've done in 42 days".

Here is a teaser pic with the rest to be released tomorrow apparently.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/COVSY1fUcAEMfr3.png:large

Source: Jonny Wakefield

Bye-bye arable land.

Yeah, this is a shame. Luckily most of the arable land is higher up outside of the canyon area, but a lot of unique micro-climates exist along those canyon walls...

i grew up there, mixed feelings

but the city of ft st john is booming, they just built a new microtel hotel, and now a new hilton hotel brand is going up and a burger king and a lot more retail space. And they are looking to open a new elementary school. And lots of houses and apartments going up when i was there in the spring.

there are also a few camps going up in the area, i think one is 2500 man camp, one is either 800 or 1400 man camp

I will put this in here since its housing for BC Hydro.

Canada's Largest Affordable Passive Housing Project
Six storey wood construction

Completed in early 2019, this 6 storey and 50 unit building is slated to become one of Canada's largest certified Passive House Building located in Fort St. John, Canada. It is also a first worldwide, as it is slated to become he Northernmost multi-storey Multifamily Building achieving the stringent international Passive House Standard.

This collaboration project between BC Hydro and BC Housing is scheduled for occupancy in early 2019 and will be home to some BC Hydro workers and their families and provide affordable rental housing to the community.

https://markendc.com/files/markendc/imag...t%20St.%20John%20Passive%20House%208.png

https://markendc.com/files/markendc/imag...t%20St.%20John%20Passive%20House%202.png

https://markendc.com/files/markendc/imag...t%20St.%20John%20Passive%20House%206.png

More pics at the source: https://markendc.com/multifamily-passive...yUD3UN-YKOLJDBJjpGApS1mBjXGSSkHAUYb3iZ9s

The amount of flooded land is insignificant. Environmental impacts are also overblown as Site C is basically a run of river facility that leverages existing storage of the Bennett Dam. The damage is already done. That being said, the cost is completely out of range. Even at half the cost, Site C makes no sense. In inflation adjusted terms, it will cost far more than the Bennett Dam, which was a far larger project (more than 2X the capacity, 19x flooded area, 3x height, 2X width).

Bennett is the dam, GMS is the generating station. And no shit Site C costs more. The design phase of this project alone costs more than the entire construction of GMS. We lived in a different time

And we call it progress!

PS: I still support geothermal over Site C. Allows us to build a facility half the size so its not such a large upfront investment. Estimates have shown it would be cheaper as well.

Then why is no one building it? I don't have the answer, but if it was the magic bullet everybody says it is you'd think some progress would have been made into using it.

Didn't a Calgary-based company get a $7 million grant from the feds a few weeks ago to do a geothermal test project?

There are a couple of different types of geothermal systems. One is simply using the ground as a giant heat sink. That can be done almost anywhere as the ground below the frost line maintains a constant 10C temperature. Systems that use this type of shallow geothermal system are generally heat pumps that uses the refrigeration cycle by removing heat from the ground and moving it to a condenser that heats air or water. Deep geothermal actually gets you hot water or even steam, but the viability of that is wholly determined by how far down you need to drill to access that thermal energy. That's not something you can do just anywhere. That geothermal community around Okotoks uses deep geothermal so they're able to pump hot water directly out of the ground and use it as a heating medium. But if I remember correctly that was a very costly system to install which required a lot of grant money from government to make viable.

Blatchford DEC is using a one kilometre distribution piping system for first phase and is almost complete ,along with a 570 borehole geoexchange field under the future storm water retention pond. The 3 MW Energy Centre is weeks away from commissioning. This will be used in association with High efficiency heat pumps. The centre is design to triple its capacity over the next few years. You will also see a lot of solar PV used on site.

We need to look at a number of combined systems since one cannot always provide the required energy needs especially at the large scale.

The heat pumps you mention have been talked about in the UK in recent times as a way to achieve a goal of having no natural gas heating installed in new homes after 2025. Probably it's a fair bit easier over there though with less of a temperature differential, but we'll see from them how feasible it ends up being.

This isn't the mythical large scale geothermal electricity we hear of though. I have no idea if it actually is feasible or not, I just am skeptical given how few projects there are.

^ well there’s no such thing as geothermal electricity perse. To make electricity out of geothermal energy you need very high temperatures from the ground capable of making steam to power a turbine. That’s doable in some places but not everywhere

Heat pumps work great in places like Vancouver where the climate is mild, down there you don’t need a ground source, just air to air. So down there, coupled with the province’s hydro electricity capacity they could easily transition away from natural gas. In places like Alberta you need to get heat from somewhere ie: shallow geothermal

Drake landing doesn’t use geothermal as a heat source. Solar is the heat source and the roof panel heated water mixture is pumped underground for storage to use later in the evening. Governments provided about $100,000 per house subsidy for this community system so not likely to be repeated.

Shallow GT works in Alberta but the power costs to upgrade the heat is quite high so you get a big power bill each month.

Quite often, geothermal heating systems are mistakenly confused with Geyser type installations we find in countries with underground volcano activity like Iceland. The constant ground temperatures (6-8° C) we find below the frost line are not hot enough to heat your home directly, which is why you will have a geothermal heat pump inside your house. The geothermal heat pump is able to convert this 6-8°C to 40-50°C through a refrigeration process. Sounds like magic? Think of a geothermal system like a giant refrigerator. Your fridge is able to cool by extracting heat from the air inside the fridge and ‘dumping’ that heat in the back (notice how your fridge is very warm on the backside?). Even when your freezer section is already below 0° C, the refrigerant is still able to extract heat from the air. A geothermal system works based on the same scientific principles. The ground loop pipes are run into the home’s mechanical room where a geothermal heat pump with environmentally friendly refrigerant is able to extract energy from the ground loop fluid. In this extracting process, the refrigerant in the heat pump turns from liquid state into a vapor state. This refrigerant vapor is injected into a compressor, where it is compressed. The compression of the vapor drastically increases the temperature of the vapor, making it hot enough to heat your home. Through either an Air or Water heat exchanger in the heat pump, the hot vapor refrigerant is able to release its heat to your home. By extracting energy from the ground loop fluid, the temperature of the fluid drops to values typically below 0° C, making it much cooler than the surrounding ground temperature. This colder ground loop fluid is pumped back into the much warmer ground where it will absorp heat from the ground again to make the cycle complete. The neat aspect of a geothermal heat pump is that it can also work in reverse for cooling purposes. In this process, heat is extracted from the warm air inside the house and ‘dumped’ back into the much cooler ground.

https://www.thermalcreek.com/frequently-asked-questions/


https://www.dlsc.ca/

Actually it's something of a hybrid it looks like. It's effectively using the ground as a heat sink to store thermal energy which it extracts to transfer heat through the condenser of the heat pump, used to effectively heat buildings when there is demand. What I'd be curious about is how much you can raise the ground temperature and how long that heat will remain. The last thermal storage project I worked on was a large storage tank buried under a building at the Edmonton airport which was designed to be cooled overnight when capacity was low and drawn out during the day when demand was high. It worked okay.. not great but okay.

The power costs you refer to are simply a factor of the size of compressor, condenser and associated specialties required for a heat pump to work in Alberta. I know they work here, our neighour has a shallow geothermal system with piping buried down underneath his slab on grade garage and a heat pump for the house. I believe he supplements heating with electric.

As I said heat pumps have their greatest potential in places like Vancouver where the climate is mild and heat from outside air can simply be transferred inside. An air-to-air heat pump. Once you get into cold climates you need to provide heat to the evaporator (Which is what the heat sink is in a shallow geothermal application) so a lot of condo buildings that use heat pumps will supplement the heat required for them to work by piping hot water from a heating boiler to the evaporators on the fan coils.

EDIT: I found some interesting information about the thermal storage system at that site. It looks like it took some time for the temperatures to get to a point where the system was effective (I actually think I remember that from the news when it first started) but over a number of years the system has reach equilibrium and is now working effectively

https://www.dlsc.ca/borehole.htm

Looks like a similar system out at Blatchford.

The way that conversations go, I would be fooled into thinking that there is some vast source of geothermal electricity out there just waiting to be tapped.

Very interesting - thanks!

I'm fairly skeptical that 'community' type heating sources like that one will ever provide a meaningful contribution in Alberta. We just don't have the socialisty attitude neccesary that any builders would have to possess to implement it in new communities. And retrofitting old communities I guess would be near impossible.

Is there much information on the economics of this?

Also - how does the glycol get to 80C? The sun can't possibly heat it up that much, can it?

As Airboy noted a similar project is currently under construction for the old city centre airport land here in Edmonton. I can't speak to the economics, I guess it'll all depend on how many people are willing to buy into that community and at what cost. It's certainly ambitious but not unheard-of. Definitely challenges retrofitting existing neighborhoods as it'd require both the installation of the infrastructure and retrofit of the heating systems in each individual home. I don't think it'd be viable to try this.

No problem getting fluid that hot in solar collectors though. they're different than solar panels in that they concentrate solar radiation and focus that energy to heat fluid. You can get crazy hot water out of a solar collector if it's positioned right and it's sunny out.

There is a fluid solar collector on the Edmonton Airport for the SETE. I remember being in the service tunnels and putting my hand on one of the lines. Quite hot even on a cloudy day. Its a small system for domestic water use.

As for Blatchford DEC there are going to be solar collectors on the plant building to offset the cost of operating the pumps

^ I actually built a prototype solar collector when I still lived in my other place based on plans I got off the internet. The idea was to use it to heat the garage by passing fluid through the collector and then through small fan coil unit that I had scrounged from somewhere. It actually worked insanely well in the late summer when I first built it but its efficacy dropped as the temperature outside went down. But I think that was the result of it being a fairly rudimentary prototype and quite small, and not insulated. But I did prove that it worked. I always intended to build a larger permanent one but never got around to it. I still have all the concave polished stainless, plexi and black ABS pipe sitting in the garage at the new house. I doubt I'd be allowed to put it on the roof though:haha:

Interesting. Seems like a no brainer if they can make it cost competitive.

An old friend of mine had geothermal heating at their house in Surrey, I think the whole street had it as all the houses were developed together.

BC Hydro starts tunnel lining process for Site C diversion tunnels

SCOTT BROOKS
JUNE 20, 2019

https://i0.wp.com/www.energeticcity.ca/w...Lining-form_2.jpg?resize=696%2C392&ssl=1
The tunnel lining equipment (slip forms) prior to being moved into the tunnels at Site C. Source B.C. Hydro

FORT ST. JOHN, B.C. – B.C. Hydro has started the tunnel lining process this week on the first of two Site C diversion tunnels.

According to B.C. Hydro Community Relations Manager, David Conway, this part of the work is the last step in the construction of the diversion tunnels prior to river diversion in the Fall of 2020.

Conway says the tunnel lining process involves using a slip form where concrete is pumped through small openings located around the slip form, enabling it to cure in a perfect circle outside of the form.

...

https://www.energeticcity.ca/2019/06/bc-...uYvRU8A6Wnda4ivVVjw6oiCKmHvuAJ0-XslHkXQY

BC Hydro adds 150 rooms to Site C work camp

Alaska Highway News
JULY 8, 2019

https://images.glaciermedia.ca/polopoly_..._gen/derivatives/landscape_804/sitec.jpg
The work camp at Site C, which is being expanded by 150 rooms this month, July 8, 2019.
Photo By MATT PREPROST

The work camp at Site C is expanding.

The camp is expanding by 150 rooms this month, 90 of which were completed over the weekend, according to BC Hydro. The remaining 60 rooms will be completed later this month, and both will be on the camp’s existing footprint, the company said.

“With the contractor workforce expanding as work progresses on the project, we made the decision to expand the camp earlier this year,” spokesman David Conway said, adding the camp has reached maximum capacity at peak times during some weeks.

There were 3,775 employed on the project in April, the latest employment figures available for the project. Of those, just over 3,000 were employed as construction and non-construction contractors, roughly 600 of them local to the Peace River Regional District.

The camp was originally sized to house 1,600 workers, but designed for 2,100 if an expansion was required, as permitted through its environmental assessment certificate,Conway said.

BC Hydro is seeking an amendment its certificate to be able to expand to 2,200 rooms, Conway said.

...

https://www.alaskahighwaynews.ca/site-c/...NLg1SxuI_HlHGuG3YwzxIzaAgJP5yvyR5oelK3yQ

Photo Gallery on Alaska Highway News
Site C Construction - May/June 2019

Alaska Highway News
JULY 5, 2019

https://www.alaskahighwaynews.ca/photos/...Ftjcu2h1vGb_foCO8VcbadbkbMfj8-ySWZ72cgrw

Breakthrough at second Site C diversion tunnel

Alaska Highway News
JULY 12, 2019

https://images.glaciermedia.ca/polopoly_..._gen/derivatives/landscape_804/sitec.jpg
Photo By BC HYDRO

BC Hydro says it broke through the second diversion tunnel needed to divert the Peace River ahead of building the earthfill dam at Site C.

The Crown utility said it reached the milestone on Thursday, July 11, after a year of excavations.

...

https://www.alaskahighwaynews.ca/site-c/...02fQWgLxfcBhkBbNQ_tnO5GlR0aoIBbDWWJRmx2k

I'm happy the province is investing in renewable energy. Does anyone know where all the electricity generated will go? Will any of it go to Alberta?

Very little if any will go east. AB has limited intertie with BC despite having synchronized grids:
-1 small line through Elk Pass connecting the Fernie area with Kananaskis
-2 medium sized lines through Crowsnest that are constrained as they share capacity with the MT intertie and several wind farms.

AESO has a project to remove constraints on the Crowsnest interties. New paths would be challenging due to terrain and AB having protected virtually the entire eastern slope. Power from Site C would need to follow a circuitous route into AB. Building a line from the BC side of the Peace Country to the Wabamun hub west of Edmonton would likely cost several billion.

AB has a massive generation surplus that has driven prices ex distribution to record lows. It is unlikely to require new supply for a very long time. Even if demand were to materialize, hydro can't compete with gas fired generation as stranded gas in northern AB has driven prices down to essentially zero.

WorkSafeBC fines Site C Contractor $662,102

ADAM REABURN SEPTEMBER 21, 2019

https://149363786.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp...use-DSC012661120190704-1500x-696x516.jpg
A photo of the powerhouse at the Site C dam in the Spring of 2019 - B.C. Hydro

FORT ST. JOHN, B.C. – Peace River Hydro Partners, has been fined $662,102.48 by WorkSafeBC.

The fine was imposed on August 21, 2019, after a worker sustained an electrical shock injury. A worker was able to access the main circuit breaker in a high-voltage electrical cabinet for tunnelling equipment.

According to WorkSafeBC, the main electrical breaker extensions on the exterior cabinet door were not functioning, the de-energization switches had been circumvented and the main breaker switch-box isolation covers were in disrepair.

...

https://www.energeticcity.ca/2019/09/wor...iPtNuKfgaIuUGOcAfKU7Hs1fmrW-OBiKxBXkueMg

If there's a massive generation surplus why is there a 250MW plant under construction and a 1000MW one planned to start next spring?

Site C Construction Schedule for November 11th to the 24th, 2019

TRACY TEVES
NOVEMBER 12, 2019

https://149363786.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp...BC-Hydro-Image-East-Spillway-696x516.png

https://www.energeticcity.ca/2019/11/sit...3DMr-OWt0_YOxozbQlgq4IZYkrz5r6Vu58Trv3j8