Sometimes, it is just amazing how crucial pieces of information can be deliberately omitted from a significant announcement and no one seems to notice.
Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro announced on Monday it would be awarding a contract to construct a wind generator site on the Burin Peninsula to a consortium led by an Italian firm experienced in wind generation of electricity.
Hydro Corporation chief executive officer Ed Martin described the project this way in a news release:
"NeWind submitted a comprehensive, cost-effective proposal for wind power...".
So how much will it cost?
Search in vain for any indication of the project cost. That's because Martin doesn't know. One of the things he admitted at the news conference announcing this project is that he now has to sit down and negotiate a 20 year-term power purchase agreement with the project proponents.
To paraphrase Martin's announcement then, it looks like this:
"We are building this amazing electricity generator that is cost-effective. We have absolutely no idea how much it will cost but we can tell you it is cost-effective."
Sounds like the Lower Churchill.
Without a business plan, or even a preliminary cost-benefit analysis, Martin and his real boss, Premier Danny Williams, committed the province to a project that if completed will double the province's debt. Plus they committed to the project in a way that made it extremely difficult to proceed successfully.
How difficult?
In a scrum last week, Danny Williams admitted that if he can't get a perfect deal, there will be no project.
Yeah.
Riiiiiiiiiiiiight, as Dr. Evil would say.
So there is a commitment to a project that will not appear at all if it is not perfect and, in the windy power project, there is a commitment to a cost-effective project yet the guy making the announcement has no ideas what the costs will be.
Incidentally, no one seems to have noticed that this project is not the result of some sort of magical post 2003 process. Yeah sure, Newind answered a proposal calll that Ed and his boss issued and they will be issuing more calls.
But NeWind is building off its experience in a project begun in 2001.
That project size? Five to 25 megawatts as a demonstration project.
