Gas plant could add 5% to N.B. Power bills, documents reveal

N.B. Power estimated it would need to increase revenue from power rates by almost five per cent to pay for electricity from a new natural gas generating station in Tantramar, according to documents filed with the Energy and Utilities Board.

“The rate impact in the first full year of operation is 4.98 per cent,” said a November 2024 briefing note.

The documents also suggest the debt-plagued utility will be paying a higher cost for its gas plant arrangement than if it owned the facility itself — in the interest of getting it built and operating by 2028.

Even so, rate increases would be even higher if the utility owned the plant, another document said.

The rate and cost estimates will be pored over when regulators at the Energy and Utilities Board examine the project at hearings next month.

N.B. Power argued last fall the board didn’t need to study the plan because it wouldn’t own the plant.

That meant it didn’t meet the threshold of a $50-million capital asset that the board must by law scrutinize for its impact on rates.

The board disagreed, saying the project still exposed the utility to financial risk and needed to be looked at.

That’s what compelled N.B. Power to file hundreds of pages of documents with the EUB, many of them publicly available on the board’s website.

The 400-megawatt plant, to be located in Centre Village in Tantramar, has sparked opposition in the community, which in turn has prompted Premier Susan Holt to muse about trying to find an alternate location.

But the documents from N.B. Power make it clear there’s little room for error if the utility is going to stay on schedule and add new generation before potential electricity shortfalls as soon as the end of next year.

“Time is of the essence,” it said.

“There is no plausible pathway in which new Combustion Turbine (CT) capacity could be avoided in addressing the forecasted fall-2027 deficiency.”

Holt’s energy minister René Legacy echoed that last week in an interview with Radio-Canada, saying “the problem is the site can’t be changed at this point and still have [the plant operating] by 2028.”