Both facilities are now operating at full capacity while their commissioning continues. The operation comes at the end of nearly a three-year construction program and is the first operational clean power project in Canada for Plutonic and GE Energy Financial Services.
The two facilities remain under the control of Peter Kiewit Sons Co., which has constructed the project under a fixed price construction contract. The project will sell all of the power generated from the two facilities to BC Hydro under a 35-year EPA. Substantial completion and handover of the facilities to the TMGP is expected by the end of the third quarter after further operator training, testing and other commissioning activities.
Until substantial completion is achieved, revenues from power sales will be credited against the $663M budgeted capital expenditures. As a bonus for early completion, Peter Kiewit Sons Co. is entitled to a portion of energy sales from the East Toba facility prior to 1 July 2010 and from the Montrose facility prior to 1 November 2010.
The project is one of several that Plutonic and GE have undertaken that will help British Columbia meet its goal of electricity self-sufficiency by 2016 by using 93% clean domestic generation sources. In addition to the Toba Montrose Project, Plutonic Power and GE Energy Financial Services are constructing the 340,000MWh/yr Dokie Wind Project near Chetwynd, British Columbia. It is scheduled to achieve commercial operation in the first quarter of 2011. GE and Plutonic have also executed a 40-year EPA with BC Hydro for another hydroelectric power project, the Upper Toba Valley Project.
