Terrace Standard, September 04, 2013

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S TANDARD TERRACE

1.30

$

$1.24 PLUS 6¢ GST

VOL. 26 NO. 21

www.terracestandard.com

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Power plant hinges on LNG potential

By Josh Massey

MARGARET SPEIRS PHOTO

■■ Tube monster wade stewart horses around with some of the equipment at the Monkey Business Gymnastics Kindercamp Aug. 29 in the Parkside Secondary gym. This group of three to five-year-olds spent each morning last week climbing through a tube, swinging from a pole, doing somersaults, jumping on a trampoline and other gymnastic moves.

CONSTRUCTION of a natural gas-fired power plant at the city-owned Skeena Industrial Development Park south of the airport hinges on how much electricity BC Hydro estimates it will need for the region’s potential liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry, says the vice president of the company which wants to build it. “We’re not going to file the project description until BC Hydro tells us this is what they want because we will look kind of silly if we file something that’s in the pubic realm and then BC Hydro comes in and says no we want something else. We don’t want to look silly,” says Alexi Zawadzki from the Calgary-based Veresen energy company. So far Veresen has signed a memorandum of understanding with the city and says that an option agreement is underway for a gas supply with Pacific Northern Gas which has a supply line running through the industrial park. The company is also speaking with the Kitselas First Nation. Its traditional territory takes in the industrial park area. Although the LNG plants now under consideration for construction in Kitimat and in Prince Rupert are expected to use their own natural gas to power facilities to super-cool massive amounts of gas for exports overseas, BC Hydro would be called upon to provide power for other plant needs. Veresen calls its planned facility a “gas peaker” because it starts up when other power sources are at maximum capacity, Zawadzki said. That’s typically five per cent, or less, of the time. Zawadzki said his company hopes to build a facility with about 500 megawatts of capacity and with each megawatt representing approximately $800,000 in construction costs, a price tag for a plant of that size would be in the order of $400 million. Depending upon circumstances, the plant would go through a three to five-year permitting and construction phase. BC Hydro’s resource planning director Randy Reimann confirmed that BC Hydro has been looking into options for a back-up facility in the area.

“We recognize the benefits of gas peaking plants on the North Coast,” Reimann said in an email. “They will support the growing loads, and the maintenance and reliability of the transmission line to northwest B.C.” “The 500 kilovolt line from Prince George to Terrace is about 450 kilometres long. While it is typically very reliable with very few outages, it makes sense to support the single line supply,” he said of the line which brings power from the BC Hydro grid to the region. BC Hydro’s recently released Integrated Resource Plan expressed the need for a peaking facility in the area and that it would entertain bids from companies once a final decision is made to proceed. “Assuming the technical studies confirm the need for natural gas-fired generation to support North Coast reliability levels, BC Hydro will conduct a competitive procurement process to enter into an agreement with a private developer to provide capacity and associated ancillary services,” reads a section from the resource plan. Zawadzki is confident Veresen would be the successful bidder on any project to generate power to sell to BC Hydro.

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Did you hear it? Two professors from the University of British Columbia say it’s unlikely the loud scraping sounds heard around Terrace on the morning of August 29 have their origin in the sky or the bowels of the earth. Rumours began to swirl after clips were posted online that the source of the screeching noises heard on both sides of town was solar flares in the atmosphere, or the shifting of tectonic plates. People compared the noises to a moose call, scraping metal, angels and whale song. UBC professor of astrophysics Brett Gladman pointed out that the sound was something like the noise northern lights can make, but that any noise coming from the atmosphere “would not have been confined to only a few kilometres.”

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Eco friendly

Quick work

Run for the prize

A man has an adventure driving his electric car up to Terrace to visit family \COMMUNITY A8

A cyclist who had his custom bike stolen gets a makeshift replacement \NEWS A11

Local runner scores in top three in two separate race series down south \SPORTS A22


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