Northwest Territories Power Corporation gets its 1st northern president

Cory Strang started with Northwest Territories Power Corporation (NTPC) as a summer student in 1998. 

Last month, he was named president and CEO of the company. 

"I didn't really think I would still be here, but I love the North and the company's been really good to me," he told Loren McGinnis, host of CBC North's The Trailbreaker.

Strang, who is Métis, is the first northern president of the power corporation, a subsidiary of NT Hydro, which is owned by the government of the Northwest Territories. 

Born in Hay River, Strang earned a degree in commerce at the University of Alberta before coming back North. He was first appointed acting president and CEO back in May. 

"I don't have to bring a learning curve," he said. "I know what the challenges are and I know what we can offer as a company."

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Tell us about your vision. 

The government of the Northwest Territories is really focused on climate change. It's really focused on reducing our carbon footprint, reducing the amount of diesel that we need to bring into the North, which is a challenge because we know it's -40 in the winter time and there's not a lot of sun for renewables. We're … also working with Infrastructure Canada on sourcing funding to improve that system and make it more resilient, but also trying to keep that affordability for our customers, because renewable generation, it's not cheap. It's expensive, and we have to make sure that we can keep the lights on when it's -45.  

There's a federal mandate to get to net zero … and the territory has its own goals around carbon neutrality. What's the vision at the power company and how to get there?

Most of our generation is through hydro … but we use about 20 million litres of fuel a year, but that's still 20 million litres of fuel that need to be brought into our communities, so we're looking at different types of generation to bridge that, more liquid natural gas, which we're currently using, up in Inuvik. We are looking at a wind turbine/battery in Inuvik as well. And also working with Indigenous governments and partnerships so they can increase some of their own solar or wind generation into the community. We're really exploring all the aspects of it to try to reduce our carbon footprint.

Did you say 20 million litres of diesel? Does that keep you up at night? 

[Carbon emissions are] a big issue. You see what happened this year up and down the Mackenzie Valley, Mackenzie River … look at even in southern B.C., all the challenges there such as atmospheric rivers, which I've never heard of before, and that's disrupting our supply chain. We're seeing larger impacts on utilities across Canada, seeing more of these one-in-100 year storms, although not having it happening once every 100 years: they seem to be happening once every two years now. Utilities across the country are trying to examine what climate change is doing for their operations and trying to adapt at the same time to make sure that we can keep the lights on, so to speak, while people are using electricity more as a tool to reduce the number of petroleum products that they're using. 

What are your goals and how do you see the situation now in terms of the reliability and resilience of our power system? 

Technically we only have two systems: we have our transmission system in the Snare around the Yellowknife area and then we have our transmission and hydro system on the South Slave and Great Slave Lake. Every other community is a standalone either diesel or, in the case of Inuvik, where we actually have some natural gas there as well.

One of the aspects that the government's looking at ... is the expansion of the Taltson Hydro facility and interconnection of the two systems such that you increase your resiliency there and also make more electricity available so if someone wants to do such things as electric vehicles, electric heat.

And then you get the resiliency in our standalone communities. We want to make sure that as we put more renewable generation on the system, that reliability stays there such that it doesn't disrupt. As we all know it's not sunny up here in the North all the time, but when it is sunny, it's really sunny. So we have to make sure that the systems are designed such that they can handle the larger swings from the renewable generation that we have.

What's your approach to Indigenous governments and communities that are working on projects to generate some of their own power from renewables, solar, things like that?

We've had quite a few discussions with communities and Indigenous governments that want to get into the power business. And GNWT is set up in their 2030 energy plan … so we follow that framework and we begin discussions with each particular community. Łútselk'e is a good example. They have a lot of availability for either hydro or solar or wind, and they're examining all those aspects, so we're working with them, providing them some load data to see what would make the best sense for them on the business case side. Any time a community wants to examine that aspect, we are more than willing to have a conversation to see what their needs are and to see if we can reduce the dependence on diesel infrastructure. 

What about electric cars? How do you see the power corporation as an important player in making that a viable option? 

It's a big challenge. It's the cold and the distance and travel. Even if you're trying to do a, say a corridor, from Alberta into the North, there's long distances. The ranges — they're getting longer. I know Ford's making trucks and they're coming out and there's some other new players coming out where the technology is getting better — but right now, the infrastructure isn't there yet, and that's where we come in. In our five-year plan, we are working on various EV charging stations or networks where we have our hydro facilities, so the southern part of the territory. In some of our smaller communities where there's more isolation, I mean, there could be an opportunity there where there are electric vehicles, and then you can also think of increasing electrification so that you have more electric heat as well if you have a renewable resource. 

From a company standpoint as well, we potentially could have increased revenue streams from markets we don't have right now. We don't have the market for heating, we don't have the market for transportation, so those are all revenue streams that we could do, and we could use our revenue stream to offset the higher cost of electricity. As a utility, we have to make sure that we have our entire infrastructure in place so that we can allow customers to make that choice. And I think customers are going to be demanding more of that choice in the next five to 10 years. 

How do you approach the challenge of affordability for power in the North? 

Part of my background is working on developing power rates, so I've sat in the hearings where you're asking the public utility board to increase rates, and that's a very complex arena. It's not an arena for the average customer to understand, and some people are upset because their power bills are high and we acknowledge that. I don't think there's anyone hiding from that. It is expensive. It is expensive to keep the lights on when you don't have that growth in your revenue stream. The territory is shrinking, it's not growing and people are looking for every way to save money and I understand that. 

One of the things that I've seen in my time here is we're working a lot closer with our territorial government, our shareholder and the energy division of Infrastructure on our policies, on the energy policies, working, trying to advocate Infrastructure Canada and the federal government for funding to reduce our dependence on not only diesel, but also to source money to do a lot of our refurbishments on our hydro infrastructure, which … it's all built in the 40s and the 60s and it's all there because of industry. 

We need to work with ... the GNWT ... to attract these mining customers or any other streams of revenue that potentially could be here to increase that revenue stream, so we can have our same costs, but just spread that over more of a revenue stream to make it a little easier on people to pay their power bills. And I understand it's expensive, it's tough.

Our long term vision and our long term plan is to not necessarily make it cheaper, but definitely to make sure that we're spending the money where the money needs to go so we can reduce that high cost of someone's power bill.