long-ago report on BC Hydro coming to Lasqueti
Some time in the late 70s or early 80s a group of Lasqueti residents met with BC Hydro. The group included people who wanted BC Hydro to come to Lasqueti and people who didn't want it to come. They asked BC Hydro exactly what it would take for them to come to Lasqueti and provide power to those who wanted it. (This was completely unrelated to BC Hydro wanting to cross Lasqueti with it's high voltage transmisson line from the mainland to Vancouver Island.)
I don't remember the numbers that were reported then, but I remember that the requirements were that BC Hydro would need two underwater cables to Lasqueti, so they would have redundancy. They would likely come from Gillies Bay on Texada Island, and land at Spring Bay on Lasqueti. Basically, they proposed to run lines on poles down the roadway from Spring Bay to False Bay area, as this is where the most residents were. The money available to subsidize this rural electrification project was not nearly enough to pay the costs, so those that signed up would have to pay significant amounts of money to finance the public part of the project infrastructure.
In addition, if poles were needed to get the power line from the roadway to houses, the cost would be about $1000 per pole. In addition, each house would have to be wired to code and inspected, at the expense of the owner, before the power would be hooked up.
Some time not long after the group reported to the island, I was at False Bay and heard a resident ask Peter Forbes (who was one of the pro-Hydro people) whether he thought that Hydro would come to Lasqueti. He looked at the person kindly and told them that he had just spent a significant amount of money buying solar panels, batteries, controllers and an inverter, etc., which he had done because he didn't think that Hydro would ever come to Lasqueti, as it would cost him more to bring it, and it would come with a monthly bill, too.
If anyone has details about the long-ago costs.0would they please share them with us, If there was a written report, I'd love to see a copy of it.
If anyone has interest now, they might contact BC Hydro and get them to update their numbers. My strong guess, given the current much lower prices and greater reliability of solar electricity, controllers, inverters and batteries, and continuing developments in nano-hydro and wind turbines, and the much-increased costs of public infrastructure projects today, that very few, if any, Lasqueti residents would opt for BC Hydro to come and bring them electricity, even if they wanted many kilowatts each day. It's probably much cheaper, easier and more reliable to do it ourselves, and with our close neighbours.
