City Notebook: Power price presto change-o!

By COLLIN GALLANT on October 7, 2023.

cgallant@medicinehatnews.com@CollinGallant

A poorly attended presentation on local power rates this week leaves two big impressions.

Firstly, this unending conversation requires a lot of coffee.

Secondly, the power price in the province – where the city took some level of direction until it blew up this summer – is on the way down.

A candidate for “thirdly” is that a local interim rate will be down while the city studies its power business model.

The rate will be subject to a public hearing Oct. 16… so put a new pot on.

Medicine Hat power customers who suffered through two months of high prices and got $800 ($2,000 for businesses) in relief payments from the city, can expect to see prices fall across the province.

Industry experts point to two Capital Power coal plants converted to burn gas and back on the system this winter. As well, there’s the new gigantic “Cascade” natural gas power plant near Edson. The $1.5-billion facility was helped along by the province’s Indigenous Opportunities Corporation – so just imagine the size of the ribbon cut by the government opening day.

Combined, the facilities should add about 10 per cent new steady supply and, in theory, push prices down.

“What’s this got to do with Medicine Hat,” you and many others may ask.

Well, until Oct. 16 at least it affects the city’s internal rates (a system people didn’t mind so much during a decade of historically low prices), as the city also makes buckets of money selling onto the provincial grid.

How much money this year may be clear when mid-year financial results are released this month.

How much next year, or after, is up for debate.

So, councillors who stalled a larger relief and rate package in June citing a potential price reversal may be proved correct after all.

At that point, will Hatters demand a more businesslike, profit-driven approach?

Maybe, maybe not, but the whole saga shows the sheer speed at which the utility market is moving at the moment.

Can Medicine Hat keep up, or devise a new rate-setting formula that will last for the long term, or modernize its facilities in the face of “net-zero” controversies that will make high prices look like summer at the lake?

If approved this month, the interim rate formula will last until the overall utility review is done.

The next formula and new mission statement for the 120-year-old power company will have to last a lot longer.

Cornucopias crops

It’s been a dry summer, and a few years removed from the height of gardening at the height of the pandemic.

But nothing is more reliable than chitter chatter about giant vegetables making its way to the newspaper.

For the last several years, it’s been mostly about sunflowers. A few years back it was kohlrabi.

Reports of a four-pound onion reached our ears this week while the News was documenting a delivery of four tonnes of pumpkins at the Market Centre on S. Railway Street.

That includes a 102-pounder, which is on display and being raffled off to those who bring in a toy donation to the Medicine Hat News Santa Claus Fund.

A look ahead

The power rate debate returns to council for a public hearing Oct. 16.

Speaking of pumpkins, the Alberta legislature returns Oct. 30.

Come on out, it’s the league debut on home ice for the Medicine Hat College Rattlers women’s hockey team this weekend. And in new digs – the Moose Rec Centre of the Southeast Hill – where they’ll host the NAIT Ooks at 7:45 p.m. Saturday and the SAIT Trojans on Sunday at 4:15 p.m.

100 years ago

City council would provide a facility free-of-charge where farmers could candle eggs at the city market, the News advised on Oct. 6, 1923.

And for the penny pincher, music purveyors in the city advertised that new “Red Seal” titles were two sided after a miracle breakthrough in manufacturing, thereby doubling the value of new purchases.

In London, PM Mackenzie King told the Imperial Conference that the parliament of a dominion should be the supreme voice in matters of foreign policy.

Bleacher seats were selling for as much as $1 ahead of the cross-town World Series between the Yankees and Giants in New York.

An inventor in London had devised a “variable gearbox” for automobiles which “automatically adjusts itself to load and gradient” without the need of invention of a clutch or manual adjustment. The designer, George Coustantinopeo, had previously devised a “synchronizing gear” that allowed machine guns to fire through the propeller of a biplane.

Collin Gallant covers city politics and a variety of topics for the News. Reach him at 403-528-5664 or via email at cgallant@medicinehatnews.com.