Manitoba Hydro

Manitoba Hydro is the electric power and natural gas utility in the province of Manitoba, Canada. Founded in 1961, it is a provincial Crown Corporation, governed by the Manitoba Hydro-Electric Board and the Manitoba Hydro Act. Today the company operates 15 interconnected generating stations. It has more than 527,000 electric power customers and more than 263,000 natural gas customers. Since most of the electrical energy is provided by hydroelectric power, the utility has low electricity rates. Stations in Northern Manitoba are connected by a HVDC system, the Nelson River Bipole, to customers in the south. The internal staff are members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 998 while the outside workers are members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 2034.

Manitoba Hydro headquarters in the downtown Winnipeg Manitoba Hydro Place officially opened in 2009.

Abbreviated history

1873-1960: electric power before Manitoba Hydro

The first recorded attempt to extract useful work from a Manitoba river was in 1829 at a flour mill (known as Grant's Mill) located on Sturgeon Creek in what is now Winnipeg. This was not successful and the milling equipment was later operated by a windmill.

Manitoba

Manitoba (ⁱ/ˌmænᵻˈtoʊbə/) is a province located at the longitudinal centre of Canada. It is one of the three prairie provinces and is the fifth-most populous province in Canada, with a population of 1,208,268 as of 2011. Manitoba covers an area of 649,950 square kilometres (250,900 sq mi) with a widely varied landscape; the southern and western regions are predominantly prairie grassland, the eastern and northern regions are dominated by the Canadian Shield, and the far northern regions along the Hudson Bay coast are arctic tundra. Manitoba is bordered by the provinces of Ontario to the east and Saskatchewan to the west, the territory of Nunavut to the north, and the US states of North Dakota and Minnesota to the south.

More than 90% of Manitoba's population lives within the far southern regions of the province, where its arable land and largest cities are located. The northern region of Manitoba, which encompasses nearly 70% the province's total area, is mostly undeveloped consisting primarily of remote and isolated communities amongst vast wilderness.Winnipeg is the capital and most populous city in Manitoba by a significant margin, with 730,018 people residing in the Winnipeg Capital Region. Other cities in the province are Brandon, Portage la Prairie, Steinbach, Thompson, Winkler, Selkirk, Dauphin, Morden, and Flin Flon.