Saskatchewan Power Corporation,

operating as A trade name, trading name, or business name, is a pseudonym used by companies that do not operate under their registered company name. The term for this type of alternative name is a "fictitious" business name. Registering the fictitious name w ...

SaskPower, is the principal

electric utility An electric utility is a company in the electric power industry (often a public utility) that engages in electricity generation and distribution of electricity for sale generally in a regulated market. The electrical utility industry is a major pr ...

Saskatchewan Saskatchewan ( ; ) is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province in Western Canada, western Canada, bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east by Manitoba, to the northeast by Nunavut, and on t ...

, Canada. Established in 1929 by the

provincial government A state government is the government that controls a subdivision of a country in a federal form of government, which shares political power with the federal or national government. A state government may have some level of political autonomy, ...

, it serves more than 538,000 customers and manages over $11.8 billion in assets. SaskPower is a major employer in the province with over 3,100 permanent full-time staff located in approximately 70 communities.SaskPower 2019, p. 2.

Legal status

SaskPower was founded as the Saskatchewan Power Commission in 1929, becoming the Saskatchewan Power Corporation in 1949 with the passage of ''The Rural Electrification Act''. The abbreviated name SaskPower was officially adopted as a trade name in 1987. Owned by the government through its holding company, the

Crown Investments Corporation Crown Investments Corporation (commonly known as CIC) is the holding company used by the Government of Saskatchewan to manage its financial and commercial Crown Corporations as well as its minority holdings in private-sector ventures. History CI ...

, SaskPower is governed by a

Board of Directors A board of directors (commonly referred simply as the board) is an executive committee that jointly supervises the activities of an organization, which can be either a for-profit or a nonprofit organization such as a business, nonprofit organiz ...

who are accountable to the provincial government Minister Responsible for Saskatchewan Power Corporation. SaskPower has the exclusive right and the exclusive obligation to supply electricity in the province, except in the city of

Swift Current Swift Current is the fifth largest city in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. It is situated along the Trans Canada Highway west of Moose Jaw, and east of Medicine Hat, Alberta. Swift Current grew 6.8% between 2011 and 2016, ending up at ...

and most of the city of

Saskatoon Saskatoon () is the largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Saskatchewan. It straddles a bend in the South Saskatchewan River in the central region of the province. It is located along the Trans-Canada Hig ...

. The Swift Current Department of Light and Power provides electrical services within the municipal boundary of Swift Current.

Saskatoon Light & Power Saskatoon Light & Power is a utility that provides electrical services within the city of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. The utility is owned by the City of Saskatoon. The company was founded in 1906. Electrical service in the rest of Saskatoon, ...

provides service to the customers within the 1958 boundaries of Saskatoon while SaskPower has responsibility for areas annexed after 1958.

Customers

SaskPower serves more than 538,000 customers through more than 157,000 kilometres of power lines throughout the province and covers a service territory that includes Saskatchewan's geographic area of approximately . This relatively low customer density means that while most North American electrical utilities supply an average of 12 customers per circuit kilometre, SaskPower supplies about three. In fiscal year 2018-19, SaskPower sold 23,559 GWh of electricity for $2,583 million (CAD).

Facilities

SaskPower has a generating capacity of 3,542

megawatt The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of Power (physics), power or radiant flux in the International System of Units, International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantification (science), ...

s (MW) from 17 generating facilities, including three

coal-fired power station A coal-fired power station or coal power plant is a thermal power station which burns coal to generate electricity. Worldwide, there are about 8,500 coal-fired power stations totaling over 2,000 gigawatts Nameplate capacity, capacity. They ...

s, five natural gas stations, seven hydroelectric stations, and two wind power facilities. In 2019, SaskPower purchased full ownership in

Cory Cogeneration Station Cory Cogeneration Station is a natural gas-fired station owned by SaskPower and located near Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. The plant operates at 260 MW in a conventional generation mode and at 228 MW in a cogeneration mode. Steam from the plan ...

, which was previously owned and operated as a joint venture between

Canadian Utilities Canadian Utilities Limited is a member of the ATCO Group of companies. Canadian Utilities Limited is a Canada-based worldwide organization of companies with assets of approximately $7.3 billion and more than 6,500 employees in three main business ...

(an ATCO Power subsidiary) and SaskPower international. The cogeneration facility supplies both electricity and steam to

Nutrien Nutrien is a Canadian fertilizer company based in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. It is the largest producer of potash and the third largest producer of nitrogen fertilizer in the world. It has over 2,000 retail locations across North America, South ...

’s Cory

Potash Mine Potash () includes various mined and manufactured salt (chemistry), salts that contain potassium in water-solute, soluble form.independent power producers (IPPs) including the North Battleford Generating Station, Spy Hill Generating Station, Morse Wind Energy Facility, Red Lily Wind Power Facility and SunBridge Wind Energy Facility. When all SaskPower and IPP facilities are counted, the total available generation capacity is 4,437 MW. The Chinook Power Station is a 350MW combined-cycle natural gas power station near

that is expected to come online in 2019. This will increase SaskPower's generating capacity to 3,892 MW, and the total generation capacity controlled by SaskPower to 4,881 MW. The SaskPower

transmission system :''See Transmission (mechanics) for a car's transmission system'' In telecommunications, a transmission system is a system that transmits a signal from one place to another. The signal can be an Signal (electrical engineering), electrical, optical ...

utilizes lines carrying 230,000 volts, 138,000 volts and 72,000 volts. There are 56 switching stations and 197 distribution stations on the transmission system. SaskPower has four interconnections to

Manitoba Manitoba ( ) is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada at the Centre of Canada, longitudinal centre of the country. It is Canada's Population of Canada by province and territory, fifth-most populous province, with a population o ...

, one interconnection to

North Dakota North Dakota () is a U.S. state in the Upper Midwest, named after the Native Americans in the United States, indigenous Dakota people, Dakota Sioux. North Dakota is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba to the north a ...

, and one interconnection to

Alberta Alberta ( ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is part of Western Canada and is one of the three prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to the west, Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest Ter ...

. Manitoba and North Dakota are on the same grid frequency as Saskatchewan, which means interconnections can be made directly using a normal AC transmission line. Alberta is part of WECC, so the interconnection relies on an AC/DC-AC link via the

McNeill HVDC Back-to-back station McNeill HVDC Back-to-back station is an HVDC back-to-back station at 50°35'56"N 110°1'25"W, which interconnects the power grids of the Canadian provinces Alberta and Saskatchewan and went in service in 1989. McNeill HVDC back-to-back station i ...

Rural areas

Incorporated under ''The Power Corporation Act'' (1949), SaskPower purchased the majority of the province's small, independent municipal electrical utilities and integrated them into a province-wide grid. It was also responsible under ''The Rural Electrification Act'' (1949) for the electrification of the province's rural areas, bringing electricity to over 66,000 farms between 1949 and 1966. To manage the high costs of electrifying the province's sparsely populated rural areas, SaskPower used a large-scale implementation of a single wire ground return distribution system, claimed to be a pioneering effort (although some utilities in the USA had been using such a system on its rural lines). It was at the time one of the largest such systems in the world. One of the last cities in the province added to SaskPower's system was North Portal in 1971 (which had been served up to this point from Montana-Dakota Utilities' distribution system in Portal, ND just across the border).

Subsidiaries

*NorthPoint Energy Solutions Inc., located in

Regina, Saskatchewan Regina () is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Saskatchewan. The city is the second-largest in the province, after Saskatoon, and is a commercial centre for southern Saskatchewan. As of the 2021 C ...

is a wholly owned subsidiary of SaskPower and is SaskPower's wholesale energy marketing agent. NorthPoint began operation on November 1, 2001. NorthPoint handles the export of power on the North American Market. *SaskPower International is a wholly owned subsidiary of SaskPower that invests in non-

crown A crown is a traditional form of head adornment, or hat, worn by monarchs as a symbol of their power and dignity. A crown is often, by extension, a symbol of the monarch's government or items endorsed by it. The word itself is used, partic ...

utility assets. They previously owned a 30% stake in MRM Cogeneration Station at Athabasca Oil Sands Project's Muskeg River Mine north of

Fort McMurray Fort McMurray ( ) is an urban service area in the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo in Alberta, Canada. It is located in northeast Alberta, in the middle of the Athabasca oil sands, surrounded by boreal forest. It has played a significant ...

, and previously owned a 50% stake in

before the complete ownership was bought by SaskPower.

Rural electrification

SaskPower was founded by an Act of the provincial legislature as the ''Saskatchewan Power Commission'' in 1929. The purpose of the Commission was to research how best to create a provincial power system which would provide the province's residents with safe, reliable electric service. A provincial power system was desirable for many reasons. In the early days of electricity in the province of Saskatchewan, electricity was largely unavailable outside of larger centres. Most electrical utilities were owned either privately or by municipalities, and none of them were interconnected. Because each utility operated independently, rates often varied significantly between communities – anywhere from 4 to 45 cents per kilowatt hour in the mid-1920s. The rapid growth in the province's

population Population typically refers to the number of people in a single area, whether it be a city or town, region, country, continent, or the world. Governments typically quantify the size of the resident population within their jurisdiction using a ...

in the first decades of the century – from 91,279 to 757,510 within 20 years – had led to a sharp increase in the demand for electricity. Finally, the provincial government had determined that the lack of inexpensive power was hampering the development of industry in the province. While the Commission began purchasing independently owned electrical utilities with the goal of interconnecting them, the economic situation of the 1930s and the labour shortage caused by the Second World War delayed the creation of a provincial power system for nearly two decades. By 1948, the Commission operated 35 generating stations and more than 8,800 km of transmission lines. However, most farm families who had electricity generated it themselves using battery systems charged by wind turbines or gasoline- or diesel-powered generators. Across the province, only 1,500 farms were connected to the electrical grid, most of them because of their proximity to the lines that linked cities and larger towns. In 1949, by an Act of the Provincial Legislature, the Commission became the Saskatchewan Power Corporation. The first task of the new Corporation was to purchase what remained of the province's small, independent electrical utilities and to begin integrating them into a province-wide electrical grid. The final step in creating a truly province-wide grid was to electrify the province's vast rural areas. The primary hurdle to rural electrification was the very low customer density in the province – approximately one farm customer per network mile (1.6 km) – and the extremely high cost of a network of the scale required by the vast distances between customers. After much study, the Corporation adopted a single wire ground return distribution scheme, which lowered the cost of rural electrification significantly. The first year of the program set the goal of connecting 1200 rural customers to the network. The experience gained during the first years led to an increased rate of connections every year, leading to a peak yearly connection rate in 1956 of 7,800 customers. By 1961, 58,000 farms were connected, and by 1966 when the program concluded, the Corporation had provided power to a total of 66,000 rural customers. In addition, hundreds of schools, churches and community halls received electrical service during this period.

Corporate governance

SaskPower is governed by a Board of Directors that is responsible to the Minister Responsible for Saskatchewan Power Corporation. The board gets appointed by the Lieutenant Governor of Saskatchewan.SaskPower 2019, p. 11. Current directors of the corporation include: Chief Darcy Bear (Chair), Bryan Leverick (Vice-Chair), Dale Bloom (Corporate Secretary), Terry Bergan, Bevra Fee, Jim Hopson, Karri Howlett, Cherilyn Jolly-Nagel, Phil Klein, Fred Matheson, Rob Nicolay, Marvin Romanow, and Tammy van Lambalgen.

Unions representing SaskPower employees

IBEW The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) is a labor union that represents approximately 775,000 workers and retirees in the electrical industry in the United States, Canada, Guam, Panama, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands; ...

Local 2067 represents approximately 50% of SaskPower's employees *

Unifor Unifor is a general trade union in Canada and the largest private sector union in Canada. It was founded in 2013 as a merger of the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) and Communications, Energy and Paperworkers unions, and consists of 310,000 workers an ...

Local 649 represents approximately 13% of SaskPower's employees

Emissions Reductions

By 2030, SaskPower plans to reduce their

greenhouse gas emissions Greenhouse gas emissions from human activities strengthen the greenhouse effect, contributing to climate change. Most is carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels: coal, oil, and natural gas. The largest emitters include coal in China and lar ...

by 40% compared to 2005. In 2012, the

Harper government The premiership of Stephen Harper began on February 6, 2006, when the first Cabinet headed by Stephen Harper was sworn in by Governor General Michaelle Jean. Harper was invited to form the 28th Canadian Ministry and become Prime Minister of ...

introduced

regulation Regulation is the management of complex systems according to a set of rules and trends. In systems theory, these types of rules exist in various fields of biology and society, but the term has slightly different meanings according to context. For ...

s to start phasing out coal-fired power plants in Canada. These regulations set an emissions limit for coal-fired generating units of 420 tonnes of CO₂ per GWh. The limit was to be imposed in 2015 on all new coal units, and would also apply to units built before 1975 starting in 2020, and to units built before 1986 starting in 2030, and would also apply to all units once they reach 50 years of age regardless of the aforementioned dates. In 2014, SaskPower rebuilt

Boundary Dam Boundary Dam is a concrete arch gravity-type hydroelectric dam, finished in 1967, on the Pend Oreille River, in the U.S. state of Washington. The dam is located in the northeast corner of Washington state. It is operated by Seattle City Light an ...

unit 3 with a CCS system capable of capturing 90% of the CO₂ emissions of the unit, and 100% of the SO₂ emissions. In 2018, the Trudeau government accelerated the coal phase-out by mandating that all coal units must shut down by 2030, regardless of the year they were built. The Trudeau government also implemented a nationwide

carbon tax A carbon tax is a tax levied on the carbon emissions required to produce goods and services. Carbon taxes are intended to make visible the "hidden" social costs of carbon emissions, which are otherwise felt only in indirect ways like more sev ...

that made it more-expensive for SaskPower to operate both coal and natural gas plants in comparison to hydro, wind, and solar facilities. The federal coal regulations mentioned above would have meant that Boundary Dam units 4 and 5 would need to close at the end of 2019. However, in 2019 the Moe government was able to negotiate an equivalency agreement with the Trudeau government that allowed Boundary Dam unit 4 to run until the end of 2021 and Boundary Dam unit 5 until the end of 2024 due to SaskPower's investments into CCS technology on unit 3. As coal units close, SaskPower plans to replace the lost capacity with low-emissions generation sources such as combined-cycle natural gas, wind, and solar, and they also plan to import more hydroelectricity from Manitoba. In particular, a new 350MW combined-cycle natural gas generating station is expected to come online in 2019 and a total of 340MW of hydro imports from Manitoba will be available by 2022. In addition to building new generators and interconnections to reduce emissions, SaskPower is implementing

energy efficiency Energy efficiency may refer to: * Energy efficiency (physics), the ratio between the useful output and input of an energy conversion process ** Electrical efficiency, useful power output per electrical power consumed ** Mechanical efficiency, a ra ...

and demand-side management (DSM) programs to reduce electricity use per-capita. Their DSM program has reduced peak demand by 11.4MW as of 2019.SaskPower 2019, p. 8.

References

Works cited

* *

Saskatchewan Railway Museum The Saskatchewan Railway Museum is a railway museum located west of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan at the intersection of the Pike Lake Highway (Hwy 60) and the Canadian National Railway tracks (on "Hawker" siding). It is operated by the Saskatchewan R ...

houses the one of a kin
Sask Power Rail Car
{{Regina Corporations Crown corporations of Saskatchewan Electric power companies of Canada Companies based in Regina, Saskatchewan Energy in Saskatchewan 1929 establishments in Saskatchewan