Let's stay with the Minister responsible for the Power Corporation. It's Friday. Mr. Speaker, I heard an interesting point raised earlier today and it was relevant to this number, the 20 per cent cap that would be put on communities in their ability to get themselves off of thermal energy.
I have heard that we want to work with communities, and I have heard that we want to get them off diesel, but now I've potentially heard that we're going to stop them in their efforts at 20 per cent. I'm wondering can the Minister provide us a little bit more clarity around that policy, why 20 per cent is the number? Does it only apply to thermal communities? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Minister responsible for NWT Power Corporation
They're the experimental and new technologies that are coming along, it is our intention of course to use those first in the thermal communities as we wish to get off of diesel power. But there are other initiatives. We are also encouraging people to reduce the amount of power they use to LED, more efficient refrigerators and so on, so we're hoping that the amount of power that they require is going to be reduced, and this 20 per cent figure which has been referenced several times today is a technical number in the sense that if you're going to have a mixture of diesel and solar, you can't go above the 20 per cent solar without expending a great deal of money for new systems.
Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that the Power Corporation is trying to encourage residents of the North to reduce their power usage; however, in efforts that residents have done to reduce their power usage, we've actually heard the Power Corporation come back to us and say you're doing good, but by doing good, we're going to have to up the rates.
We've got to charge more; we have infrastructure to pay for. So, Mr. Speaker, is that the reason why there's a 20 per cent cap is because 80 per cent is still required to pay for the thermal infrastructure in thermal communities?
Mr. Speaker, the reason that the solar projects are capped at 20 per cent is that the diesel needs to run at the other 80 per cent. If they run more intermittently as I understand it, they become more unstable.
The Minister keeps referencing to solar only as the alternative source, but earlier it was noted that other potential alternatives energy sources that could be considered to help reduce diesel consumption in the communities would also fall under this 20 per cent policy. So just for clarification, if Colville Lake, as an example, was able to throw up a windmill tomorrow, hypothetically, and reduce their diesel consumption by another 20 per cent, would that not be allowed?
Mr. Speaker, one of the issues with solar is that obviously it's not sunny all year round. I would anticipate that if there was a system that could have proper batteries for storage of power or if the wind was so consistent that it provided power throughout the year and we didn’t need diesel at all, we would certainly contemplate that type of system, but currently the technology is not there and it's not cheap.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife North.
Mr. Speaker, I'm not sure that I got an answer to the question. I've already gotten to the 20 per cent. If I found a way in my community to get my reliance on diesel fuel another 20 per cent off by putting up another alternative sources of energy, would that be allowed?
Mr. Speaker, as I mentioned earlier, the problem is that that this 20 per cent was not simply dreamed up. It was a figure above which the diesel system became erratic or undependable. Now, if we had a system that provided 100 per cent of the power needs and we no longer needed diesel that would be one thing, but it would seem to me that a system that went up to 40 per cent, say between solar and some other system, would exacerbate the problem with the diesel system.
