SaskPower

Infobox_Company
company_name = SaskPower
company_type = Crown Corporation
company_
foundation = 1949
location = Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada
industry = Electricity generation, transmission and distribution
num_employees = 2,425
products = Electricity
homepage = [http://www.saskpower.com/ www.saskpower.com]

SaskPower is the principal supplier of electricity in Saskatchewan, Canada.

A Crown corporation owned by the Government of Saskatchewan, SaskPower has the exclusive right and the exclusive obligation to supply electricity in the province, except in the cities of Swift Current and Saskatoon. Saskatoon Light & Power provides service in Saskatoon.

SaskPower was founded as the Saskatchewan Power Commission in 1929, becoming the Saskatchewan Power Corporation in 1949. The abbreviated name SaskPower was officially adopted in 1987.

Owned by the government through its holding company, the Crown Investments Corporation, SaskPower is governed by a Board of Directors who are accountable to the government Minister responsible for SaskPower.

SaskPower serves over 441,000 customers through more than 154,000 kilometres of power lines throughout the province and covers a service territory of over 526,600 square kilometres. This relatively low customer density means that while most North American electrical utilities supply an average of 12 customers per circuit kilometre, SaskPower supplies about three. In fiscal year 2006, total electricity revenue was $1,456 million (Canadian) on sales of 17.4 terawatthours of electricity.

SaskPower has a generating capacity of 3,206 megawatts (MW) from 16 generating facilities, including three coal-fired base load facilities, four natural gas-fired facilities, seven hydroelectric facilities, and two wind power facilities. SaskPower has an additional capacity of 449 MW through long-term power purchase agreements with independent power producers, for a total available capacity of approximately 3,655 MW.

The Saskpower transmission system utilizes lines carrying 230,000 volts and 138,000 volts. These lines also interconnect SaskPower's grid with utilities in the United States and with Atco Electric in Alberta and with Manitoba Hydro in Manitoba.

Incorporated under "The Power Corporation Act" (1949), SaskPower purchased the majority of the province’s small, independent municipal electrical utilities and integrated them into a province-wide grid. It was also responsible under "The Rural Electrification Act" (1949) for the electrification of the province’s rural areas, bringing electricity to over 66,000 farms between 1949 and 1966. To manage the high costs of electrifying the province’s sparsely populated rural areas, SaskPower used a large-scale implementation of a single wire ground return distribution system, claimed to be a pioneering effort (although some utilities in the USA had been using such a system on its rural lines). It was at the time one of the largest such systems in the world.

SaskPower has studied a Clean Coal Project. The intention would be to build a coal-fired plant that would effectively capture all carbon dioxide emissions. However, present cost of such a plant is so high that SaskPower will not construct such a plant until 2009 at the earliest. Instead the required capacity will be obtained from power plants fuelled by natural gas. [ Toronto "Globe and Mail", Sept. 7, 2007, "SaskPower shelves clean coal project" ]

Subsidiaries

*NorthPoint Energy Solutions Inc., located in Regina, Saskatchewan is a wholly owned subsidiary of SaskPower and is SaskPower's wholesale energy marketing agent. NorthPoint began operation on November 1, 2001. NorthPoint handles the export of power on the North American Market.

*SaskPower International Inc. was established in 1994 as a wholly owned subsidiary of SaskPower. SaskPower International investing in power projects and selling flyash.

*SaskPower Shand Greenhouse is a wholly owned subsidiary of SaskPower located near the Shand coal-fired plant. The greenhouse was built in 1991 to offset the environmental impact of burning coal. Using waste heat produced by the power plant, it grows 500,000 trees, shrubs and native plants a year that are distributed throughout the province.

Generating Facilities

All of SaskPower's generating facilities are located within Saskatchewan, with the exception of MRM. SaskPower either owns the facilities directly or through SaskPower International Inc. SaskPower International Inc. also has two joint ventures Cory (50% split with ATCO Power) and the MRM ( 30% SaskPower International Inc. and 70% ATCO Power). SunBridge is jointly owned by Suncor and Enbridge with SaskPower purchasing the power production.

Rural Electrification

SaskPower was founded by an Act of the provincial legislature as the Saskatchewan Power Commission in 1929. The purpose of the Commission was to research how best to create a provincial power system which would provide the province’s residents with safe, reliable electric service.

A provincial power system was desirable for many reasons. In the early days of electricity in the province of Saskatchewan, electricity was largely unavailable outside of larger centres. Most electrical utilities were owned either privately or by municipalities, and none of them were interconnected. Because each utility operated independently, rates often varied significantly between communities – anywhere from 4 [White, Clinton O. Power for a Province: A History of Saskatchewan Power. Regina: Canadian Plains Research Center, 1976. 8.] to 45 [--. 14.] cents per kilowatt hour in the mid 1920s. The rapid growth in the province’s population in the first decades of the century – from 91,279 to 757,510 within 20 years – had led to a sharp increase in the demand for electricity. Finally, the provincial government had determined that the lack of inexpensive power was hampering the development of industry in the province (Ref).

While the Commission began purchasing independently owned electrical utilities with the goal of interconnecting them, the economic situation of the 1930s and the labour shortage caused by the Second World War delayed the creation of a provincial power system for nearly two decades.

By 1948, the Commission operated 35 generating stations and more than 8,800 km of transmission lines. However, most farm families who had electricity generated it themselves using battery systems charged by wind turbines or gasoline- or diesel-powered generators. Across the province, only 1,500 farms were connected to the electrical grid, most of them because of their proximity to the lines that linked cities and larger towns. [http://www.saskpower.com/pm/rural_elect/rural_elect.shtml]

In 1949, by an Act of the Provincial Legislature, the Commission became the Saskatchewan Power Corporation. The first task of the new Corporation was to purchase what remained of the province’s small, independent electrical utilities and to begin integrating them into a province-wide electrical grid.

The final step in creating a truly province-wide grid was to electrify the province’s vast rural areas. The primary hurdle to rural electrification was the very low customer density in the province – approximately one farm customer per network mile (1.6 km) – and the extremely high cost of a network of the scale required by the vast distances between customers. After much study, the Corporation adopted a single wire ground return distribution scheme, which lowered the cost of rural electrification significantly. [http://www.saskpower.com/pm/rural_elect/rural_elect2.shtml]

The first year of the program set the goal of connecting 1200 rural customers to the network. The experience gained during the first years led to an increased rate of connections every year, leading to a peak yearly connection rate in 1956 of 7,800 customers. By 1961, 58,000 farms were connected, and by 1966 when the program concluded, the Corporation had provided power to a total of 66,000 rural customers. In addition, hundreds of schools, churches and community halls received electrical service during this period. [http://www.saskpower.com/pm/rural_elect/rural_elect2.shtml]

Clean Coal Project Feasibility Study

SaskPower, in partnership with Air Liquide Canada, Hitachi, Marubeni Canada, Babcock & Wilcox Canada, and Neill and Gunter, is undertaking a feasibility study on the design and engineering of a near-zero emissions clean coal unit. The unit, which would be the first of its kind in the world, is being designed to use Oxyfuel pre-combustion nitrogen removal technology. This technology results in the capture of about 95 per cent of the carbon dioxide (CO2) typically emitted when coal is burned for electricity generation. The CO2 would be compressed for enhanced oil recovery or deep geological sequestration. If SaskPower decides to proceed with the project, the first unit will be located at the Shand Power Station. The decision on whether to proceed with the project will be made in mid-2007.

Corporate Governance

SaskPower is governed by a Board of Directors. Current directors of the corporation include: Patricia Quaroni (Chair), Cheryl Bauer Hyde, Neil Collins, Tammy Cook-Searson, Neil Henneburg, Richard Hordern, Lyn Kristoff, Bob Linner, Al MacTavish, and Dr. Michael Mehta.

Unions representing SaskPower employees

* [http://www.ibew2067.com/ IBEW Local 2067]
* [http://www.cep.ca/ CEP] Local 649

References

Further reading

Print:
* Anderson, Dave. To Get the Lights: A Memoir about Farm Electrification in Saskatchewan. Victoria: Trafford, 2005.
* White, Clinton O. Power for a Province: A History of Saskatchewan Power. Regina: Canadian Plains Research Center, 1976.

Online:
* Bassendowski, Sandra. [http://www.saskarchives.com/web/pdfs/SaskHistoryFall2006.pdf The Power of Electricity to Change Women’s Work in Post-War Saskatchewan.]
* Champ, Joan. [http://olc.spsd.sk.ca/DE/saskatchewan100/researchpapers/WDM/Rural%20Electrification.pdf Rural Electrification in Saskatchewan during the 1950s.]

External links

* [http://www.saskpower.com SaskPower]
* [http://www.saskpower.com/cleancoal Clean Coal Project]
* [http://www.northpointenergy.com/ NorthPoint Energy]
* [http://www.saskpowerinternational.com/ SaskPower International]
* [http://shand.saskpower.com/shand/ Shand Greenhouse]
* [http://www.saskpower.com/poweringyourfuture/today/generation.shtml Generating Facilities]
* [http://www.saskpower.com/aboutus/corpinfo/corpinfo.shtml Corporate Profile]
* [http://www.ca.airliquide.com/en/index.asp Air Liquide Canada]
* [http://www.hitachi.ca Hitachi Canada]
* [http://www.marubeni.com Marubeni]
* [http://www.babcock.com/bwc Babcock & Wilcox Canada]
* [http://www.neillandgunter.com Neill and Gunter]

* The Saskatchewan Railway Museum houses the one of a kind [http://www.saskrailmuseum.org/ Sask Power Rail Car]