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that is the subject of Dispatch # 61. I asked my source how he comes up with the extra cost of taking the Bipole down the West side coming out to only three dollars a year per Manitoba household, as opposed to Hugh McFadyen’s estimate of $11,000 plus, and this is what he emailed :
McFadyen’s number on the cost of BiPole III down the Westside is $11,000 per household
There are 325,000 households in Manitoba x $11,000 per household = 3.6 billion (approximately)
Total cost of the Bipole III down the Westside which includes the transmission line and the required converter stations one at either end of the line that will be required no matter what side a line is built on this equals $3.2 billion.
So if the converts stations are required no matter what side the line is built on then this should be subtracted from McFadyen’s calculation as they would have to be built no matter what side the transmission line is built on. Cost of converter stations is: $1 billion (approximately) for the converter stations.
$3.2 billion subtract $1 billion (converter station cost) = $2.2 billion.
McFadyen’s calculates his figure as a onetime expense per household when in fact the cost would be spread out over the entire life of the project (60 years) or in other words the cost would be amortized over the period of 60 years.
The number the government of Manitoba has calculated is about $13.00 per household over 60 years or $780.00 per household (onetime expense) x 325,000 households which equals $2.5 billion.
The CEO of Hydro also noted that households only use a third of the power consumed in Manitoba so the $13.00 should be divided by a third which equals $4.30 per household per year for 60 years or a onetime cost of $260.00.
Seeing as Hydro derives 25% of its revenue from export sales one can safely assume that the actual cost to Manitoba households will be even less (by 25%) as export sales will go towards offsetting the cost of Bipole III.
CEO of Manitoba Hydro verbatim on the cost of running Bipole III down the Westside per Manitoba households :
“I did not include, which Mr. McFadyen was talking about, just the increased losses that would occur; I excluded that. But that wouldn’t be–it wouldn’t double this number, for sure; it’d be less than that. So then I took the number of households from the escalated–up to 2017 and that number is less than our current number of customers. So I used that number and took the incremental cost per household for the difference in the two lines. That number came out to $821 per household, and then I said, well, that is over the life of the line, so I divided that by 60 and so the annual cost would then be $13.68. Then I figured, well, if we’re talking households, households only use a third of the total amount of the system–power that’s used on our system, so I thought that number should be divided by a third, but I didn’t go that far.”
So McFadyen is playing a numbers game, as I say in the Dispatch, and the people of Manitoba should not be fooled by it. It’s hardly worth destroying a spectacular virgin wilderness and spiritual homeland for three bucks a year.