No more open bar for businesses

“We don’t want the world to become a dollar store for electricity,” Hydro-Québec’s current CEO Sophie Brochu explained on Paul Arcand’s microphone on Wednesday, referring to the extremely low prices granted to set companies. Up here.

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Hydropower has long been a mockery of Quebec’s industrial policy to attract big companies. But because Hydro-Québec will need to generate a lot more electricity to meet demand in the next few years, choices will have to be made. Last April, Hydro-Québec sent a message to manufacturers to warn them about setting up an evaluation process for projects over 50 MW.

“Now we cannot accept all industrial projects as before. We will have to choose them, or tell the entrepreneurs who come to Quebec: you have to find your electricity and make your own contracts with suppliers like Boralex or Hydro, but there will no longer be a special rate for you,” says Pierre -Oliver Pineau.

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Quebec owners of Central River Hydro

– 589 MW hydropower park – about one third of the production of the Romaine hydroelectric complex.

– Thirteen power stations in the Cascade and three additional reservoirs along approximately 500 km of the Connecticut and Deerfield rivers.

– supplies more than 213,000 households annually in New England – slightly less than the city of Longueuil (246,000 inhabitants).