Organization Footprint Exercise

Organization Footprint Exercise

Section 1

British Columbia Hydro and Power Authority (BC Hydro) is a regulated provincial Crown Corporation reporting to the Minister of Energy and Mines. It is the third largest electric utility in Canada, serving 95% of the population of the Province of British Columbia (the province), or approximately 1.8 million residential customers. In addition, BC Hydro supplies electricity to the province's commercial and industrial users. The corporation's primary business activities are the generation and distribution of electricity of which 90% is produced by the company's hydroelectric facilities. Pursuant to legislation, BC Hydro is responsible for providing an efficient and reliable supply of electricity and is required by government to generate and deliver energy in ways that are both environmentally and socially responsible (Marshak, 2010). BC Hydro is a significant asset to the province, having provided relatively low cost power to the residents of British Columbia, including industry and commercial consumers, for over 50 years. This has helped make BC an attractive place to live and a competitive place to do business. Residents and businesses of BC are fortunate to have BC Hydro providing them with such a critical service at a relatively low cost.

BC Hydro is regulated by the British Columbia Utilities Commission (BCUC), under the Utilities Commission Act (UCA). BCUC is an independent, quasi-judicial regulatory agency of the Provincial Government whose mandate is “to ensure that ratepayers receive safe, reliable and non-discriminatory energy services at fair rates from the utilities it regulates, and that shareholders of those utilities are afforded a reasonable opportunity to earn a fair return on their invested capital.”

BC Hydro experienced excessive growth in its employee population between 2006 and 2010 which required the organization to undergo numerous organizational changes. BC Hydro recently revised its organizational structure, following the re-integration of British Columbia Transmission Corporation (BCTC) one year ago (discussed below). Prior to the integration, BCTC was a Crown Corporation which planned, operated and maintained the province's publicly-owned electrical transmission system (Lippitt, 2009).

BC Hydro's transmission system moves electricity from generating stations to distribution substations, where it is transformed to lower voltages for distribution to customers. The BC Hydro high-voltage transmission system consists of 18,286 kilometres of transmission lines, operating at voltages from 60 kV to 500 kV.

The 500 kV bulk transmission network connects the major generators in the northern and southern Interior regions of the province, with the major load centres in heavily populated southwest B.C. Electricity is supplied to the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island from the Peace River hydroelectric system through Kelly Lake Substation, and from the Columbia River system through Nicola Substation. The relationship between installed generation capacity and electrical demand around the province drives the development and operation of BC Hydro's bulk transmission system. The 500 kV bulk transmission system is planned and operated so that at any time, even during peak load periods, the system can withstand an outage of any single transmission line without loss of electrical load. There are exceptions to this rule, such as areas ...