New Brunswick power is enlisting the help of Ontario Power Generation to help tackle poor performance at one of its largest generation assets.
A three-year contract will have three OPG employees working at the Point Lepreau nuclear generation station in order to help improve reliability and performance, costing just over $2 million a year.
CEO Lori Clark told the legislature’s public accounts committee that an unplanned outage at the plant earlier this year wiped out all profits generated by the utility, leading to another year of losses.
“I always say plus or minus $50 million is break even for us and when we have a significant event, whether it’s a storm or a significant unplanned outage at one of our generating stations that impacts our ability to hit our financial targets,” she said.
The shakeup will also see the departure of chief nuclear officer (CNO) Brett Plummer, who was brought in by the utility in 2017 to improve performance at Point Lepreau, but the facility has struggled to meet performance targets, placing significant financial pressure on the utility.
Clark will take over as CNO due to requirements in the Electricity Act that say the utility must have a permanent CNO. As part of the deal OPG’s CNO Steve Gregoris will provide advice and expertise on how to manage the asset.
Clark says that OPG’s experience in successfully running six Candu reactors will be invaluable as the utility looks to improve the reliability and performance.
“We get access to OPG’s expertise in operations, work management, outages, and other areas of their operation where we have questions about how we improve in certain areas,” she said.
The utility and governing Progressive Conservatives have been under pressure over Plummer’s cost to the utility as Point Lepreau has continued to struggle. Plummer’s contract paid about $1.3 million this year, plus about $30,000 in travel and living expenses to enable him to commute back and forth from his home in Maine.
Green leader David Coon says the justification for Plummer’s compensation has always been that he had the expertise to improve operations at Point Lepreau and he’s glad to see NB Power taking a different tack after years of poor results.
“The explanation for a number of years now for the very high contract being paid to Mr. Plummer was his expertise was needed to get Point Lepreau back on track,” he said.
“That didn’t happen clearly. It continues to decline in reliability so it looks like they’re going to try a new approach, which is good. It’s good not to be stuck in a prior decision when it’s not panning out.”
But Coon says he’s skeptical that better outcomes are ahead.
“New Brunswick Power employees … have incredible expertise in running that plant so I don’t know how bringing in new people from OPG is going to make any particular difference,” he said.
“The utility seems to think at the management level that someone else is going to the problem when I think the problem is inherent in that nuclear power plant.”
NB Power lost $43 million last year, which it says is mainly due to struggles at Point Lepreau as it spent $207 million on replacement power during a December outage and a longer than planned outage in the spring. The station only achieved 56.6 per cent capacity in the 2022-2023 fiscal year, compared to 87.7 per cent the year prior.
Point Lepreau has faced numerous issues since its $2.4 billion refurbishment that finished in 2014, with a number of outages related to the non-nuclear equipment at the station.
The three reinforcements from OPG include a site vice-president to replace Plummer, as well as a manager focused on improving performance and another to look at how the facility can use capital improvements to increase reliability.
Liberal energy critic Keith Chiasson says he’s pleased to see the utility trying something different to get on top of the issues at the station.
“We’re getting the expertise from OPG and at the same time we might get better results from Point Lepreau. I mean obviously the nuclear set has been underperforming the last ten years, we’ve had one good year, and maybe one person can’t fix all the problems,” he said.
“Maybe by bringing in OPG and those three experts we’ll get different results.”
Clark says the contract is separate from discussions with OPG about an ongoing “partnership” at the plant.
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