Clearing up some confusion

Times Reporter

 

A few weeks ago in Town council one councillor stated that Danielle Smith, Wild Rose Alliance, had said the Altalink transmission line project would be $14 billion dollars. The actual cost of the current proposed project will be approximately $1.1 billion, with the ten-year plan being approximately $16 billion. The $16 billion is not a guaranteed over 10 years; it is a projected number regarding anything which may come up from now until then.  

“If you took the entire ISO’s 10 year plan….everything they think might be needed and then it all broke tomorrow then yeah, you’d probably have $16 billion. In that plan much of it is staged, certain things have to happen before some of that would get built. And none of that cost comes onto your bill all at once, because I think they said last time transmission facilities have a long life. We recover those costs over the life of the facilities, so it gets amortized basically over 40 years,” said Leigh Clarke Senior Vice President, External Engagement for Altalink.  

“It’s just inaccurate to suggest that suddenly we’re going to be paying for $16 billion worth of transmission tomorrow, we just aren’t. This line we estimate to be about $1.1 billion, I don’t know what ATCO’s estimate is for their line out east, but because of that amortization and the costs of spreading them out over such a long period, it’s a $1.10 a month,” said Clarke. 

Smith said the numbers she was given were provided by Joe Anglin, a landowners advocate. 

“I don’t know what any of the specific project lines cost, but Joe Anglin has added up all the costs of all of lines of the Alberta electric system operator plan and it’s about $16 billion if all of that transmission gets built,” said Smith.      

In order to suddenly be paying for $16 billion worth of transmission lines basically the whole system would have to fail at the same time. The chances of that happening are next to none.