Manitoba's Hydroelectric Resources and Interconnections

In many parts of the world, and particularly in North America, the development of remote renewable energy resources has resulted in an improved standard of clean living for the population and an enhanced quality of life. As each stage of development was accomplished in the planning of the reliability of the system, the authors looked at the possibilities of interconnecting with adjacent power systems. In the early 1950s, the interconnection of two power companies in Manitoba was accomplished, followed with a very low capacity interconnection with the Ontario Hydro Northwest region. The capacity of interconnections from Manitoba are in excess of 60 percent of the peak load of the Manitoba system and are expected to increase in the future. The authors want to generalize here by saying that the reliability of any system would be improved if it has interconnections of capacity equal to the connected load of the system as each new interconnection was added, the security of the system was improved. When the 500 kV interconnection was added, the security of the system was greatly enhanced.