EDF, Invenergy and Innergex wind farms in line for Québec power deals

Province government-owned Hydro-Québec is due to enter talks with developers of six wind farms as it looks to buy power from nearly 800MW of capacity following two tenders launched in late 2021.

Developers were successful with an average price of C$61/MWh (US$44/MWh) in 2022 dollars, and are able to choose for this price to be indexed either to the consumer price index or at a fixed rate. This price does not include costs of transmission or balancing.

The utility plans to finalise contracts in the coming weeks and then submit them to the Québec energy board for approval. It has not confirmed how much power it will buy from each of the six projects.

Developers can choose the duration of their power deals, with contracts having a minimum duration of 20 years.

Hydro-Québec had initially sought to buy output from 480MW of wind power and also from 300MW of renewable energy sources. It selected projects with a combined capacity of more than 1.3GW – 159MW of its own hydroelectric projects – but plans to buy power from just 797.52MW.

The winning wind farms are:

Hydro-Québec’s vice president of integrated energy needs planning and risk management, Dave Rhéaume, said the utility expects the province’s energy demand to increase by 14% by 2032.