FAQs for local governments

While demand has been largely flat over the past 15 years—due to energy conservation and declines in the forestry industry—a lot has changed in the past couple of years.

We're forecasting a sharp increase in demand for electricity due to significant population growth, a large increase in industrial load and electrification, which is still the most viable pathway for our customers to reduce their carbon emissions.

Our Integrated Resource Plan, approved by the B.C. Utilities Commission (BCUC), outlines how we'll meet growing demands across a range of scenarios. It's designed to be flexible, preparing us for high and low load scenarios, from accelerated electrification to economic downturns.

We're taking several steps to power more than one million new homes in the coming years. These include:

• Adding Site  C, which will power half a million new homes and increase supply by 8%.

• Bringing new renewable wind and solar projects online from our recent call for power, collectively powering half a million new homes and boosting our supply by 8%.

• Increasing investments in energy efficiency, which will save us 2,000 gigawatt hours of electricity – enough to power 200,000 homes.

We've selected 10 renewable energy projects—nine wind and one solar—to diversify our generation mix and provide approximately 5,000 gigawatt hours of electricity per year. That's enough to power half a million new homes, boosting our supply by 8%.

B.C. is well positioned to add more intermittent renewables, like wind and solar, to the grid. Our integrated, flexible system of hydroelectric dams acts as batteries when the wind isn't blowing or the sun isn't shining.

These projects are geographically diverse, representing almost every region in B.C, with five in the southern interior, two in the central interior, two in northern B.C., and one on Vancouver Island. Their development and construction will generate between $5 billion to $6 billion in private capital spending across the province, and create approximately 2,000 jobs annually on average during construction.

The weighted average price for these successful projects is $74 per megawatt hour (2024), which is around 45% lower than the contracts awarded in our last call for clean power, after adjusting for inflation. This helps us keep electricity bills affordable for our customers.

Together with the Province, we're committed to holding regular, competitive calls for power based on demand.

We're also investing in expanding and strengthening the power system through our $36 billion, 10-Year Capital Plan. This ensures clean power can be delivered to new homes, businesses, and industries when and where they need it.

This includes:

• New transmission, substation and distribution networks to keep up with growing demand.
• Investments to connect the successful proponents from the recent call for power.
• Boosting transmission capacity to support industrial development and economic growth in the north-west and north-east regions.
• Expanding B.C.'s EV charging network.
• Investing in renewable energy within our Non-Integrated Areas to meet growing demand.
• Replacing aging equipment, to improve safety and reliability risks.

These important investments will create economic opportunities right across the province, generating around 10,000 jobs for skilled workers and promoting economic growth for First Nations and communities all over B.C.

We're making it easy to connect to our system.

Through our 10-Year Capital Plan, we're investing billions over the next decade to support new customer connections, especially in high-growth areas. This includes support for residential housing growth, residential and commercial electrification, electrification of transportation and industrial electrification.

With connection volumes averaging more than 40,000 per year and increasing, we're taking steps to reduce timelines and costs. Here's how:

• Updating our Distribution Extension Policy, for the first time in over 15 years to bring more cost certainty and reduce connection costs for new customers.
• Expanding our planning team by adding over 100 new designers.
• Streamlining processes to reduce timelines.
• Collaborating with municipalities to coordinate major construction projects, to reduce delays, minimize disruption and costs.

Connecting homes and businesses remains a top priority. The BCUC recently approved updates to our Distribution Extension Policy, set to take effect, July 5, 2025. These changes will streamline upgrades in new housing developments and businesses, speed up connection timelines, provide more cost certainty and reduce cost for new customers connecting to our electricity grid.

Last updated in 2008, the policy sets out how costs are shared between new and existing non-industrial customers for new or upgraded connections. With the updated policy, we'll eliminate most system improvement costs for new customers and increase our contribution to extension costs, making connections more cost-effective.

In response to the ongoing economic and trade, the Province submitted a rate stability direction to the BCUC. The direction aims to provide customers with financial certainty during unpredictable economic times while allowing us to continue to deliver reliable, affordable power.

The BCUC approved a 3.75% annual rate increase for the next two years. Starting April 1, 2025, electricity bills will increase by 3.75%—or about $3.75 per month for the average residential customer.

These stable, predictable rates will help us continue building critical infrastructure to strengthen B.C.'s economy. Even with these changes, our rates have stayed below the inflation rate for seven years in a row. From 2017/18 to 2026/27, our total rate increases will be 12.4% below inflation.

To help customers during tough times, along with the Province we've expanded programs like the Customer Crisis Fund, adding $2 million in additional support to households experiencing temporary financial hardship. Customers also have access to flexible payment options, equal payment plans, and energy savings programs to help manage costs.

With new rate options like time-of-day pricing and an optional flat rate, we're giving customers more ways to save money.

With climate change increasing the likelihood of significant weather events or patterns we're fortunate to have an integrated system across the province that allows us to diversify our energy storage. So when it's dry in one region, we can ramp up operations in another.

We're constantly adapting to ensure the best possible response. We continue to take steps to improve weather and inflow forecasting, including:

• Looking at longer term (seasonal and annual) and near-term forecasts (next 14 days) when managing our reservoirs.
• Expanding our monitoring technology that helps improve forecasting. This includes automating snow survey stations and using real-time snow and climate stations.
• For near term flood risk management, forecasting all coastal watersheds down to the hour, which improves the forecast accuracy.
• Investing in capital infrastructure projects—like spillway gate replacements—that'll increase resiliency of the system to climate change.