Green energy transformations mean big projects. The CAD$13.5B Muskrat Falls project was started with the best rewards in mind. The work to get the rewards sees years of failures, ongoing problems, and lots of money spent. This snapshot of problems points to the details of making a project for 1% of the world's hydro power work.
Grid Problems
Forest fires in Quebec have resulted in electricity operations being interrupted during the first week of June. When ‘tripped’ systems act to immediately separate the Muskrat Falls and its grid from the Hydro-Quebec grid. On each side this caused isolated cascade problems into electricity problems with the grids. It seems likely additional equipment, software, and procedures will be needed as fires continue to occur.
Generator Problems
The primary power-generating turbines at Muskrat Falls have been showing a mechanical problem with generating unit #2 (of 4). Vibration problems first noted in 2021 have now been traced to damage of metal parts with cracks caused by hydrogen embrittlement. This will require that unit #2 be completely dismantled onsite for repairs. This obviously reduces available generating capacity and increases reliance on the other 3 units for the unknown duration of the repairs. Inspection work is trying to find out if the other 3 units have the same problems. Even full plans for remediation may take 1-2 years to produce. The hope is for contractor’s construction insurance to pay for most of the costs though this isn’t known yet.
Units 1 and 3 have seen multiple cracks on the discharge-ring-flanges that reduce generating capacity until repairs are completed (short term problem). While working on an incident knocking unit 3 offline it was discovered that the monitoring software was not working. The software was supposed to continuously collect and analyze data to look for causes of failures. Since the recording and trend analysis data was not collected the root cause of the incident could not be found. The likely consequence of all these failures is to reduce the reliability and availability of power generation.
Transmission Line Failures
Operations with production deliveries of power began at the end of April 2023 on the Muskrat Falls Hydro project’s transmission line (“Labrador-Island Transmission Link”). This connects power generation with electricity users in Newfoundland and onwards to Nova Scotia (via the “Maritime Link”). It has taken almost CAD$4B, and 9 years, from start to the April 14th commissioned delivery to get this working. The 1100 km (688 miles) link was designed to bring up to 900 MW of low-cost electricity to customers. The final ‘commissioning’ step was an important trigger to the financing and electrical rate costs from the generating and transmission line projects. There are still engineering problems with the transmission of electrical power on the line. Current operations are limited by software problems that caused outages for up to 58000 people during the testing and evaluation phases.
Ongoing issues include mechanical components of the transmission line that failed during winter weather, and more problems with Newfoundland-terminus equipment where design reliability has not been met. The mechanical turnbuckles that failed, and dropped lines, in winter winds, (mechanical support and attachments for the actual power lines) may require different corrective actions. If a mechanical replacement is possible this can be accomplished at a nominal cost. If the problems were caused by a design (and subsequent deployment) fault the cost will exceed CAD$100000 per tower-to-tower span of lines. There are 3200 towers between Muskrat Falls and Newfoundland’s Soldiers Pond terminus. The most likely faults occur in about 160 tower spans (about 20%). The full extent of the problem won’t be known until 4Q2023.
At Soldiers Pond the interconnection between the transmission line and other electrical generating lines (“synchronous condensers”) have 2 of 3 units operating with additional late-deployment work tasks and some unit #2 repairs (for a cooler leak) ongoing with warranty work. The result of ongoing issues has been to limit some transmission capacity and thus deliveries to Newfoundland.
Long Term Contracts
Contracts, and partial ownership, between different Canadian provinces has resulted in Quebec receiving highly favorable rates for (15% of total Quebec capacity) electricity of CAD$0.002 KWH and reselling it for CAD$0.073 KWH. Some estimates place the benefits for Quebec over the life of the agreements (ending August 2041) at CAD$28B. New dam construction by Hydro Quebec generates electricity at a cost of CAD$0.10 KWH.
Selling electricity forward to Nova Scotia, New England, and further will require Quebec, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Labrador to complete the “Atlantic Loop” electricity project that is currently budgeted at CAD$6.75B (2022). The Canadian Federal Government will ante up CAD$4.5B thru the Canada Infrastructure Bank (a government institution). The remaining costs of the interconnections, and possibly the inflation cost increases during construction, would most likely fall onto the same consumers as Muskrat Falls. Adjustments to forward sales to the USA are not yet complete.
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