Foreign expertise could build Nunavut hydro projects: expert

The engineers who built this hydroelectric dam near Nuuk, Greenland could build a hydro project in Iqaluit for half the cost a Canadian company would charge, a former QEC executive told Iqaluit City Council last week. (FILE PHOTO)

A retired Qulliq Energy Corp. engineer says Nunavut should look outside Canada to develop its hydroelectric power potential.

Axel Have told Iqaluit’s finance committee on Oct. 28 that the companies that built hydro dams in Greenland should be invited to do the same in Nunavut.

“We don’t have any experience building hydro dams on rugged terrain,” Have said.

Fluent in Danish and retired from a job as Qulliq’s vice-president of operations and engineering, Have researched the hydroelectric infrastructure of Greenland with an eye to bringing their expertise to similar conditions and challenges found in Nunavut.

Sixty per cent of Greenland’s electricity comes from hydro, Have said, and with another project due to come online in 2013, that will soon rise to 85 per cent.

Have said that from the Greenland dams he researched, the construction cost was a fraction of the proposed costs of using contractors from Canada.

The dam currently under construction in Greenland will provide 22.5 megawatts of electricity to Ilulissat, 60 km away, and its total cost including the power lines will come in at $122 million.

Another dam servicing Sisimiut will be able produce up to 15 MW, although Sisimiut now only uses 7.5 MW for its population of 6,000.

The Sisimiut dam and related infrastructure cost $85.4 million.

A large 17 MW dam, which could be built by Canadian industry in Nunavut, would cost $350 million, he said, including the interest on a 25-year mortgage.

Such a dam could potentially cut electricity rates in half, depending on the price of fuel for a diesel dam, he argues.

Have’s proposal is ambitious: build a dam as large as possible to meet the constantly expanding demand in Iqaluit, and use the surplus for heat to reduce the use of heating fuel, as is done in Greenland communities with excess electricity.

In pushing hydro, Have points out that the technology is old and well established and not as experimental as newer alternative energy sources such as wind, solar or tidal power.

It would save additional money by making unnecessary any expansions to the tank farm, he said.

It would also eliminate the millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions that come out of the Iqaluit diesel power plant every year, which contributes to climate change.

In making his pitch, Have proposed different scenarios from staying on diesel— a small dam that would still require some diesel power for the city; a medium dam, and the large, $350 million dam that would produce a surplus of electricity.

The larger the project is, the more expensive but the more attractive it would be in the long-term, he said, acknowledging that the most expensive dams might be out of Nunavut’s financial reach.

Iqaluit Mayor Elisapee Sheutiapik suggested that the City of Iqaluit might be able to tap into funding to assist Qulliq Energy to investigate the possibility of getting foreign expertise for a hydroelectric project.