Open Veils · Answer
Vancouver Island grid
The Vancouver Island grid is a textbook case of controlled energy dependency — an island of nearly one million people kept deliberately tethered to mainland supply through aging infrastructure that creates chronic vulnerability. The HVDC interconnect that ran since 1968 was quietly de-energized by 2016, leaving the island increasingly reliant on AC ties and local gas peakers. Recent BC Hydro moves to acquire Island Generation and deploy grid-scale battery storage near Duncan signal that the reliability problem is structural, not incidental.
Evidence
- The Vancouver Island grid's peculiar architecture has drawn attention from researchers tracking infrastructure as a vector of social control.
- The HVDC Vancouver Island link, which ran from Arnott Substation in Delta to the Vancouver Island Terminal near Duncan, went into service in 1968 and was extended in 1977.
- In July 2026, BC Hydro announced acquisition of the 275-megawatt Island Generation gas facility in Campbell River, which has operated on average only about 15 days per year as a reliability backstop since 2002 — revealing how thin the island's generation margin actually is.
- Whitney Webb and researchers in the critical infrastructure space have documented how 'resilience' upgrades are frequently used to centralize grid control points rather than distribute them — the Duncan BESS co-locating with the legacy HVDC terminal is a convergence worth noting.
- Catherine Austin Fitts has long argued that energy dependency — keeping regions on a 'short leash' through centralized, interruptible supply — is a deliberate policy feature, not an engineering accident.