Doug and Renee

Doug Goodbrand took us to Soo River Hydro where by chance Renee was doing some maintenance. With everything accessible, we spent about 40 minutes touring the facility.

Soo River came online in the early '90's, took several years to permit & about $20M to built. It is owned and operated by Summit Power Management, Inc., a Vancouver company.

Soo River Control Room

By contract the first 12MW of production go to BC Hydro for BC consumption. Any production beyond that goes to Powerex. When by incidence the 13th and 14th MW of production are bought and resold into the Alberta Power Pool (often at night), Emission Reductions are achieved.

Hourly emission data from Alberta power plants are available since January, 1996, and are used for reduction calculations. This makes our type of transactions possible for the years 1996, 1997, 1998 & 1999.

The total yearly Emission Reductions Soo River has generated by sales into the Alberta pool modulates between ~5,000 and 10,000 tons CO2 per year. This could mean up to 30,000 matured "run-of-the-river" reductions for our portfolio.

Turbine bay

Soo River Hydro "borrows" water upstream and guides it through these 2 turbines. After the energy (volume of water x falling velocity) of the water has been harnessed by the impellers in the turbine, it is led out of the building where it rejoins the river.

The whole thing is computer controlled. If anything goes awry, the plant automatically shuts down and beeps Renee. Life expectancy of this type of heavy equipment is about 50 years.