{"id":314282,"date":"2025-11-29T11:57:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-29T11:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/314282\/"},"modified":"2025-11-29T11:57:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-29T11:57:08","slug":"hydro-quebec-becomes-net-importer-of-power-in-reversal-from-past-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/314282\/","title":{"rendered":"Hydro-Qu\u00e9bec becomes net importer of power in reversal from past years"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Electricity lines in Beauharnois, Que., in January of 2025. Hydro-Qu\u00e9bec is now buying more power from outside the province than it is exporting.Christinne Muschi\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

Hydro-Qu\u00e9bec is now buying more power from outside the province than it\u2019s exporting, a significant reversal from years past caused by a drop in its northern water reservoirs at a time of surging demand. <\/p>\n

The utility, Canada\u2019s biggest producer of electricity, purchased about 10 terawatt-hours of power at a price of 5 cents a kilowatt-hour for the first nine months of the year, according to its latest quarterly report published Friday. It sold about 8 twh at 15 cents a kwh over the same time outside Quebec. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhile the reservoirs are prudently managed and Hydro-Qu\u00e9bec has the resources necessary to respond to the demand for electricity, the situation resulted in a decrease in sales on external markets,\u201d chief financial officer Maxime Aucoin said in a statement. He predicted 2025 will be a record year for imports. <\/p>\n

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The provincial Crown corporation has 28 large reservoirs that it uses to produce hydropower, fed by rain and snow melt. The largest is the Caniapiscau reservoir (surface area: 4,359 square kilometres) that supplies the power stations of La Grande in the James Bay region. Local media reports over the summer said that reservoir was only at about 44-per-cent capacity. <\/p>\n

Water cycles are unpredictable. After an eight-year period of high water inflows from 2013 to 2021, volumes in Hydro-Qu\u00e9bec reservoirs have since decreased to below average levels, according to Pierre-Olivier Pineau, an energy specialist at Montreal\u2019s HEC business school. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not surprising and we should not be alarmed,\u201d Mr. Pineau said in an interview. \u201cMarkets and interconnections are there to balance supply and demand.\u201d<\/p>\n

The sheer size of Hydro-Qu\u00e9bec\u2019s system and its storage capacity give the power producer flexibility in handling its reserves, exporting electricity when prices are high and importing when they\u2019re low, Mr. Aucoin said. The company has generated more than $600-million in profit this way since January, part of the $2.83-billion in net income it reported for the first nine months of the year. <\/p>\n

Quebec sells most of its electricity exports on the northeast spot market, although two long-term supply deals with Massachusetts and New York are set to come online over the next several weeks. The bigger of the two, called the Champlain Hudson Power Express (CHPE), will provide one-fifth of the city of New York\u2019s power when it starts next May.<\/p>\n

The utility has planned for the launch of those two export contracts and won\u2019t back down on its commitments despite the challenging water-level conditions, chief executive Claudine Bouchard told reporters earlier this month. \u201cThere\u2019s no way out\u201d of the deals, she said. <\/p>\n

Demand for electricity in Quebec is expected to double by 2050. In response, Hydro-Qu\u00e9bec is pushing forward with a $200-billion plan to develop new clean-power generation facilities and improve the reliability of its grid. <\/p>\n

The effort, which is at the centre of Premier Fran\u00e7ois Legault\u2019s strategy to counter the economic pain of U.S. tariffs, involves tripling its wind-power production and building 5,000 kilometres of new transmission lines among other initiatives. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Electricity lines in Beauharnois, Que., in January of 2025. Hydro-Qu\u00e9bec is now buying…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":314283,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[901,888,902,879,877,903,45,49,48,876,895,896,891,878,875,46,549,295,894,887,914,880,881,893,889,890,884,904,885,909,910,912,907,911,905,908,882,898,899,714,897,906,865,61,900,892,886,883,913],"class_list":["post-314282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-alberta","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=314282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314282\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/314283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=314282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=314282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}