BC Hydro Run-of-River Project Provides Power to Grid, Improves Reliability

A McBride area run-of-river project is now delivering clean, reliable power to BC Hydro's grid. The Castle Creek facility in British Columbia, Canada, began producing electricity earlier this month and is expected to generate 34 GWh of clean electricity a year.

The project is designed to provide "islanding" for McBride – if a problem affects the BC Hydro transmission line supplying power to the community and causes a power outage, the Castle Creek facility can supply power to the community.

The project was developed by Castle Mountain Hydro. BC Hydro signed an agreement in 2010 to purchase power from the project under the Clean Power Call – a request for proposals from projects capable of providing clean electricity using proven technologies such as hydro, wind and solar, among others. The call resulted in agreements for 27 projects, which are expected to generate 3,266 gigawatt hours of electricity a year – enough to power more than 290,000 homes annually.

Facts:

• The Castle Creek Electricity Purchase Agreement was signed in July 2010 under BC Hydro's Clean Power Call.
• The project is located on a tributary of Castle Creek about 25 km southeast of McBride, and will connect to an existing distribution line to McBride to deliver power.
• The Castle Creek project has a contracted capacity of 6 megawatts, and can provide power to the local community during an outage.
• During construction, the project created about 30 jobs in the McBride area and injected $3 million into the local community. It cost an estimated $15 million to construct.
• Now that the project is operational, it will create six long-term local jobs for operations and maintenance.