Run of River Power feels hydrology pinch in Q1-'09

27 May 2009


The Canadian company said slower than normal snowpack melt and lower rainfall in the three months to 31 March led to revenues from hydro generation being less than the comparable period last year. The problem is a continuation of that experienced over 2008, which then led to a 25% drop in output and revenues.

The company's portfolio is mostly hydro power, chiefly the 7.6MW Brandywine Creek plant, plus some biomass in British Columbia.

Electricity output was down 22% to 1471MWh in Q1 compared to the same quarter in 2008, which led revenues to fall by a similar proportion to Can$85,546 (US$76,777).

A total of 640MW of run-of-river projects are at various stages of development, it said.

Projects under advanced development planning are the Upper Pitt River cascade and Upper Mamquam plants, which have potential installed capacities of 180MW and 33MW, respectively.

Last year, the company submitted the schemes to BC Hydro in the utility's Request for Proposal in the 2008 Clean Power Call. The proposed capacities for the Upper Pitt and Mamquam schemes that it submitted were 155MW and 35MW, respectively.

The Upper Pitt River cascade would include seven plants. The cascade would be developed by a subsidiary company, Northwest Cascade Power Ltd. The key rivers feeding the Pitt are Boise, Bucklin, the Corbold creeks, Homer, Pinecone, Shale and Steve.

The Upper Mamquam cluster would comprise three plants. The key rivers in the watershed are Raffuse Creek, Crawford Creek and Skookum Creek.

Run Of River Power said in its annual results for 2008 that it had been taking forward a further 27 projects spread across the Bella Coola, Klinaklini and Mosely catchments with design capacities estimated at 224MW, 117MW and 96MW, respectively.

Projects for development include Gott Creek and Dewdney Creek, which could have capacities of 10MW and 6MW, respectively.




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