The drought that is burning the forests of the north has not emptied the reservoirs of Hydro-Quebec, but it complicates the activities of its employees on site, some of whom had to be evacuated.
It’s a special year, according to the spokesperson for the state-owned company, Francis Labbé. “The winter was less snowy in the north, and the snow cover melted faster, which explains the drought and the fires,” he says.
The level of the large Hydro-Quebec reservoirs, which is always at its lowest at the end of winter, is not a concern, according to him.
Even if we are experiencing a drier spring and early summer than in recent years in northern Quebec, in the current state of things, the energy stocks in our reservoirs do not raise any concerns.
Francis Labbé, spokesperson for Hydro-Québec
Hydro-Québec manages 27 reservoirs with a storage capacity equivalent to 173 terawatt hours of electricity, or the equivalent of Québec’s electricity needs for one year. The largest of these reservoirs are located in northern Quebec, where forests have been burning for a month.
The water level in the reservoirs is information that Hydro-Quebec reveals only twice a year, “for commercial reasons,” said its spokesperson.
The last disclosure dates back to 1er January 2023 and indicates that the stock of accumulated water was higher than that of the previous year. Since 2014, the trend in water levels has been increasing.
“In the longer term, forecasts related to climate change suggest an increase in precipitation of between 5 and 10% in Nord-du-Québec, precisely where we have our large reservoirs,” said the spokesperson.
disrupted activities
The fire nevertheless disrupted the Hydro-Quebec network. The very dense smoke loaded with fine particles has disrupted transmission lines and caused three outages since the 1er June, says Francis Labbé.
Two hundred workers from power plants near the main fires were still being evacuated on Friday in case the smoke became intolerable and the only access road was inaccessible.
Forest fires are frequent in northern Quebec at this time of year and Hydro-Quebec has an agreement with SOPFEU, which generally takes care of the protection of its facilities. This year, due to the number and scale of the fires, the state corporation went into the fight itself.
“We took initiatives ourselves, because SOPFEU is in the business,” says Francis Labbé. We mainly cleared trees around the stations to remove fuel from the fire. »