$1B BC Hydro power upgrades in Surrey for 158,000 new homes

BC Hydro to build $1 billion worth of Surrey substation upgrades for up to 158,000 new homes

BC Hydro electricity transmission lines in Surrey City Centre. (Google Maps)

Extensive investments will be made to the City of Surrey’s electrical infrastructure over the coming decade to better support the municipality’s immense population growth and building development activity.

BC Hydro announced today it will spend about $1 billion over 10 years to build new additional substations and expand existing substations within Surrey. This capital investment will support the construction of 90,000 to 158,000 new additional homes across the city.

This includes a new additional substation within Surrey City Centre to provide electricity for 20,000 to 35,000 new additional homes, and a new additional substation within Campbell Heights for another 20,000 to 35,000 homes. Both of these new substations will be operational by 2032.

Additionally, there will be a redevelopment of the Scott Road substation with upgrades to the transmission connection by 2032 for an additional 10,000 to 17,500 homes.

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The McLellan substation will be expanded in two phases, reaching completion in 2026 and 2028, for an additional 40,000 to 70,000 homes.

“In growing cities like Surrey, where we are seeing substantial housing, building, transportation and industrial growth, we are embarking on significant upgrades to our electricity system, including investments in our transmission lines, new and expanded substation projects as well as major distribution investments to support underground and overhead infrastructure extensions to ensure we can continue to provide reliable and clean electricity to our customers,” said Chris O’Riley, president and CEO of BC Hydro, in a statement.

“We are also making important changes to our customer connections process to speed up timelines for newly constructed homes and buildings.”

According to the provincial government’s most recent population forecasts earlier this year, by 2029, the City of Surrey will become BC’s most populated city when it reaches 785,619 residents — squeaking past Vancouver’s 780,075 residents. The gap led by Surrey will grow with each passing year afterward.

Surrey is also expected to become the first BC municipality to reach one million residents — by 2042. In the same year, Vancouver will trail behind at just over 936,000 residents.

Based on previous older conservative estimates, Surrey City Centre’s population is expected to more than double to at least 70,000 by 2040.

There will also be added power needs from new additional mixed-use, commercial, light industrial, and other employment uses in the Surrey City Centre, Clayton, and Campbell Heights areas.

“As Surrey continues to grow at a rapid pace, it is essential that we have a reliable and clean energy supply to power our homes, businesses, and transportation needs,” said Brenda Locke, the mayor of Surrey.

Anita Huberman, the president and CEO of the Surrey Board of Trade, added, “Grid capacity and storage infrastructure through technology innovation will be scaled up to accommodate and support Surrey’s diverse industry base.”

In addition to the $1 billion in substation-related investments in Surrey, BC Hydro is also spending $700 million to upgrade the regional transmission system that partly runs through Surrey, which will connect Surrey substations with the network in Vancouver, Burnaby, Richmond, and the Fraser Valley.

BC Hydro is also making investments in the power transmission and distribution infrastructure to run the trains of SkyTrain Expo Line’s 16-km-long Surrey-Langley extension, which will open in 2028 and be a catalyst for immense new housing and job space in high-density transit-oriented developments.

Last month, the electric utility also announced Langley Township and Langley City will benefit from $725 million in substation-related investments over the next decade.

This includes the aforementioned substation projects of Campbell Heights and McLellan, which benefit both Surrey and Langley. As well, there will be a new additional Willoughby-Clayton substation, which will power an additional 20,0000 to 35,000 homes, and new underground and overhead lines to support the demand in not only the Willoughby-Clayton area but also the Brookswood and Gloucester areas.

It was also announced in June 2024 that BC Hydro will invest $1.25 billion into the substation infrastructure within Burnaby over the next 10 years to provide additional power capacity for between 98,000 and 170,000 additional homes.

There are growing concerns and questions over the scope of investments needed in infrastructure, healthcare, and education in order to adequately accommodate BC’s growing population due to immigration and ambitious housing supply and affordability policies.

These announced investments in Burnaby, Langley, and Surrey are part of BC Hydro’s updated 10-year capital plan of $36 billion in regional and community infrastructure investments across the province, which was announced in January 2024. This is a 50% increase in investments over the utility’s previous plan due to population and economic growth, the accelerating shift towards the electrification of building systems and the adoption of battery-electric vehicles.

Additionally, separate from the 10-year capital plan, BC Hydro is also looking to buy 3,100 gigawatt hours (GWh) of additional electricity each year starting in the late 2020s. For the same reasons, the need to buy more power is much sooner than anticipated, and the amount is equivalent to about 60% of the capacity of the new Site C hydroelectric dam, which is expected to reach completion next year. BC Hydro’s updated forecast already includes the anticipated major capacity increase from the operation of Site C.

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