Can British Columbia Achieve Electricity Self-Sufficiency and Meet its Renewable Portfolio Standard?

British Columbia’s energy policy is at a crossroads; the province has set a goal of electricity self-sufficiency, a 93% renewable portfolio standard and provincial natural gas strategy that could increase electricity consumption by 2,500-3,800 MW. To ascertain the reality of BC’s supply position, we model the physical characteristics of BC’s hydroelectric generating system introducing variable head heights for the two dominant power stations. Using historical inflow and reservoir level data, we apply our linear programming model to investigate whether BC is capable of meeting is self-sufficiency goals under various supply and demand scenarios