Here's how Saskatchewan trades energy with its neighbours

After Saskatchewan’s move to provide emergency power to Alberta made headlines – CTV News spoke to SaskPower to chat about the longstanding practice of sharing electricity to keep the lights on.

Jeff Nichols is the manager of economic grid optimization and trading with the provincial crown corporation. He explained that power sharing between provinces is a routine and necessary practice.

“Imports and exports of electricity are very common. They're part of normal business operations for utilities around the world," he said. "The vast majority of the time those transactions are an economic trade. But if an emergency situation comes up, dealing with that becomes the priority."

The trading of electricity is done through various “interconnections” in the form of cross-border transmission lines.

Saskatchewan itself shares interconnections with Manitoba, Alberta and North Dakota.

Canada and the United States share a highly integrated electricity grid – with every province boasting an interconnection with at least one neighbouring U.S. state.

The result is 35 cross border transmission lines tying the two nations together according to the national energy forum Electricity Canada.

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Through the interconnections, SaskPower can deal directly with its equivalent organization across the border.

“Normally we're looking for opportunities to either reduce our costs by purchasing from those markets or to generate revenue for SaskPower by selling if we have excess,” Nichols explained.

The vast majority of transactions SaskPower handles on its own are short term – such as the recent export of 153 megawatts (MW) of electricity to Alberta.

“When you start talking about longer term transactions, people higher up may get involved with that,” Nichols added.

SaskPower says 2023 was a record year for SaskPower’s export revenue. According to Nichols, those exports represented slightly less than four per cent of SaskPower’s total electricity sales for the year.

Electricity imports are a bit different for the province. Saskatchewan has several long term supply agreements with Manitoba Hydro, which can provide up to 290 MW of electricity per hour.

“So because of those long term contracts, the volume of imports doesn't vary quite as much from year to year as exports would,” Nichols said. “Last year, imports made up about seven per cent of SaskPower’s supply mix.”

Concerning the supply agreement with Manitoba, there were several factors that made the deal attractive to the province.

“At the simplest factor, we were at a spot where we were looking at planning and determined that we had a need for power at that future point in time,” Nichols said. “The other thing that was attractive about it is the fact that Manitoba system is largely hydro generation, and so that power will be non-emitting generation.”

In its latest available data (dated Jan. 16), SaskPower reported its system demand as 3,403 MW, while its generation was recorded as 3,454 MW with 51 MW in exports.

Saskatchewan’s grid has a net capacity of 5,353 MW. The province’s power use record was set on Dec. 30 of 2021 with 3,910 MW.

The system is broken down into six types of generation: natural gas (1645 MW), coal (1106 MW), wind (309 MW), hydro (254 MW), solar (3 MW) and other assorted sources (137 MW).

Natural gas and coal make up 80 per cent of Saskatchewan’s generating capacity.

Nichols reiterated the practice of power sharing is something that benefits everyone.

“Interconnections with our neighbors really benefits SaskPower customers, both from an economic and reliability standpoint. Those interconnections provide reliability benefits in normal operations, and especially in emergency situations as well,” he said.

“Our North Star is always to keep the lights on and so we can assist our neighbors in doing that.”