HYDRO-QUEBEC's EXPERIENCE IN DEVELOPING INTERCONNECTION PROJECTS IN VARIOUS MARKET ENVIRONMENTS

摘要

The availability of vast hydraulic resources has enabled Hydro-Quebec (HQ) to develop a power system essentially based on hydroelectricity, which accounts for about 94% of the total generation presently connected to the transmission system of HQ. In addition to keeping rates within the Province of Quebec among the lowest in North-America, hydroelectricity has presented HQ with increasingly profitable market opportunities with neighboring power systems. These market opportunities arise from the widespread use of more expensive thermal generation in the neighboring systems and are further enhanced by diversity of load patterns between markets. The total export capacity from the HQ system is presently about 6,800 MW, a significant amount when compared to the total generation capacity of approximately 37,000 MW. Historically, HQ's strategy to fully benefit from market opportunities has been favored by the vertically-integrated nature of its corporate structure and on the reliance of long term firm sales contracts to mitigate the financial risk of building expensive generation and transmission infrastructure. However, the competitiveness of its hydroelectric generation is such that even today in the North-American open market context, where short term transactions are the norm, power sales to neighboring systems provide a significant part of HQ's revenues, offering substantial benefits.