| Atco Electric: Cold Determination |
| Featured Spotlights | |||
| Written by G. Jeffrey MacDonald | |||
| Tuesday, 30 June 2009 | |||
 In the face of frontier-like conditions, this builder continues to supply necessary infrastructure to Canada’s northern region.
To satisfy a tremendous thirst for power, companies in search of oil and natural gas at Fort McMurray rely on Edmonton-based Atco Electric, a division of the publicly traded Atco Group. So great are this one industry’s needs that its demand constitutes 80% of Atco Electric’s business, even though Atco services a vast region that includes more than 200,000 customers across Northern Alberta.  John Carroll, VP of projects and construction To keep up with demand, infrastructure now requires a major upgrade. But that’s easier said than done in this region, where temperatures average between -5 and -25 degrees Celsius in winter. “We have always been, and we continue to be, very much a frontier-type company,” said John Carroll, vice president of projects and construction at Atco Electric. “We’ve built a lot of facilities over the years, and we’ve come back and rebuilt them as the capacity needs increased and we had to reinforce the system.” A new backbone Alberta’s power industry is gearing up for ambitious investment. In a plan filed in early June with regulators at the Alberta Utilities Commission, AESO projected reinforcements to the province’s electricity backbone would cost an estimated $14.5 billion. Regulators will allocate responsibilities for infrastructural improvements to particular companies. Atco Electric is expected to receive a portion of the new assignments and implement its share over a 10-year period. AESO sees promising long-term benefits to an infrastructure face lift that’s expected to last some 40 years. Land-use impacts will be minimized through the use of high-voltage direct current lines in some areas, according to AESO. What’s more, new transmission lines spell big opportunities for suppliers of energy derived from renewable sources such as wind and solar. But just as the oil sands aren’t easy to unlock, the installation of transmission lines in this area can be a formidable process. To meet the challenge, Atco Electric draws on decades of experience as well as detailed planning to deliver results. Building transmission lines in Alberta means moving tons of heavy industrial equipment to locations miles away from the nearest road. Getting to these regions, which locals call “the bush,” means taking advantage of what nature doles out in terms of weather, though not necessarily the warm kind. “You try to complete all the difficult sections when it’s cold,” Carroll said. “You basically have to get across water, and you don’t have any other access, so you have to do it under winter conditions.” Once steel pile foundations for transmission structures are installed, heavy-duty helicopters sometimes carry giant steel structures above the tundra and lower them into place. But getting to that stage depends on Mother Nature first serving up a frigid winter. “We need to be able to put in ice bridges and get a lot of frost in the ground before we can take heavy equipment like cranes and other construction equipment out into the bush,” Carroll said. “Then we’ve got to execute by hitting the project with everything we’ve got in a relatively short time frame.” Offshore labor Navigating extensive logistical challenges marks just one hurdle that Atco Electric needs to cross. Another challenge: finding qualified skilled labor. On capital improvement projects, Carroll said the company relies on contractors for most of its labor needs. When installing new transmission lines, Atco Electric needs specially trained transmission linemen in a big way. But such skills aren’t abundant in Edmonton or surrounding areas, at least not on the scale needed to deliver massive, multi-year projects. After reviewing local labor options when doing capital projects, Atco Electric complied with Canadian law by first casting its search nationwide and then looking offshore for workers qualified to do the jobs. Recession-induced unemployment levels have increased the size of available labor pools in Canada, but Carroll still isn’t expecting a glut of Canadian workers able and willing to relocate to toil under what can be difficult working conditions. “A year and a half ago, we had a real labor shortage here in Alberta,” he said. “There were vast numbers of foreign workers being brought in from the Philippines and other countries under temporary work visas. Virtually all of our big contractors were dependent on this labor. I could see us getting back into that.” Atco Electric makes a point to recruit from local aboriginal populations whenever possible. The company relies on aboriginal workers to do everything from building ice bridges to keeping snow plowed. “We try to the extent possible to work with local communities and local populations, and if they have some skills, we try to get them engaged,” Carroll said. For projects on the horizon requiring funding, Atco Electric, by Alberta regulations, plans to turn in large measure to its ratepayers (primarily the oil and gas customers who consume most of Atco Electric’s power) to pay for improvements in the form of higher rates. Although customers never like to pay more, Carroll said they recognize the necessity and know an improved system will serve their growth prospects for the long term. G. Jeffrey MacDonald is an independent journalist based in Massachusetts. He can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it |
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