REPLAY: Manitoba connects with Minnesota on power deal - Winnipeg Free Press

REPLAY: Manitoba connects with Minnesota on power deal - Winnipeg Free Press

WINNIPEG — A combined power deal between Minnesota and Wisconsin will kick off the construction of a new dam in northern Manitoba.
The deal is worth $4 billion and will see hydro sell 475 megawatts southwards starting in 2015.
To meet that demand Hydro will have to build the $5.6-billion Keeyask Generation Station on the lower Nelson River 175 km northeast of Thompson.
"This is the largest dollar sale of exports that we’ve had in the history of Manitoba Hydro in absolute dollar terms," Premier Greg Selinger said today at a news conference at Hydro’s downtown headquarters. "We like to think of it as Manitoba’s oil, but more sustainable and certainly greener as well."
Selinger also said Hydro continues to work on another export power sales to Wisconsin.
If that 500-megawatt deal happens, it would lead to the construction of the Conawapa Generating Station.
The new agreements still need regulatory approval.
Last year Hydro signed a deal worth $3 billion to sell between 375 and 500 megawatts to Xcel Energy of Minneapolis for 10 years starting in 2015.
The Minnesota Power deal comes as Manitoba’s Public Utilities Board weighs the risks of Hydro spending $20 billion over the next decade to build the Keeyask and Conawapa stations on the upper Nelson River and the Bipole III transmission line.
The two facilities would add another 1,930 megawatts of electricity to Hydro’s system to use in the growing domestic market and to export to Minnesota and also Wisconsin. Hydro’s new $1.3 billion Wuskwatim project on the Burntwood River is to generate 200 megawatts starting next year.
The new deal also calls for the inclusion of a "wind storage" provision that allows Minnesota Power to transmit electric energy northward from its wind farms in North Dakota when wind production is high or electric loads are low.