While temperatures dipped to frigid lows this month, Manitoba Hydro says electricity consumption hit a record high.
Spokesperson Peter Chura says the demand was so high that Hydro had to purchase additional electricity from the energy market. With power consumption rising each year, Chura says the utility is looking at ways to ensure supply keeps up with Manitoba’s growing needs.
He notes that Jan. 20 was a very cold morning in southern Manitoba with a temperature around –32C for many towns. It was so cold that schools throughout the province were closed as a cold arctic air mass brought dangerously cold temperatures to the province. The extreme cold, combined with winds from the northwest, resulted in wind chill values ranging from -44 to -55.
“And we wound up using 5,111.5 megawatts of electricity, which beat the previous record by a considerable amount, by about 183 megawatts. Just to put that in perspective, that is greater than the generating capacity of one of our smaller generating stations up north.”
With that much power being used in one day, Chura says Manitoba Hydro needed to purchase electricity.
“There’s no question that we were able to meet the need,” he reassures. “It’s a case of having other resources around and knowing that as time goes on, we’re needing more and more of those resources to meet the need. But in the case of that January 20 peak, we did have to go to the energy market and purchase a little extra electricity to make up the difference. But that’s always available and on a morning like that we’re able to meet the need for sure. So if it’s keeping the lights on, keeping the furnace fan going, keeping the coffee hot, whatever it takes, we’re able to do it. But Manitobans are certainly using more and more electricity all the time.”
Chura explains that electricity requirements can be met as Manitoba and Manitoba Hydro are part of a continent-wide energy market.
“We have interconnections of big, high voltage transmission lines that reach down into the United States. So, energy goes both ways. We sell a lot of electricity to the United States, but we also, when need be, we can import if there’s a particular day when the available capacity isn’t quite there to meet what we need in Manitoba, we can buy a little bit to make up the difference.”
Going forward, Chura says one of the priorities is finding new means of energy efficiency.
“Efficiency Manitoba has some great tips on their website. Of course, most people know that if you need to plug in your vehicle, you can set a timer, so you don’t need to plug it in all night. You can make sure, of course, that you’ve done whatever you need to do in keeping your windows sealed and your doors closed on a very, very cold day like that.”
Chura says a longer cold snap can also result in more energy being used because all the heat that was stored in a building will be gone completely and that results in heating systems having to work extra hard just to keep up.
“You step on your cold tile, floor in your bathroom, and it’s so cold that there’s just no heat left in the building whatsoever by that point.”
He notes the crown corporation adds around 7500 customers each year which also leads to more energy required in Manitoba.
“As the province grows, the need for electricity grows. That’s what we’re going to be doing going forward… making sure that we’re able to not only sustain the electricity system that we have today in terms of maintenance on existing facilities and replacing old facilities but also thinking in terms of what new resources we’re going to need over the next few years in order to meet these increasing needs for electricity in Manitoba.”
Chura offers some statistics to provide perspective on provincial growth.
“If I go back to 2013, so about 12 years ago, the peak, the record load that year in January was 4,600 megawatts.”
That’s 500 megawatts less than our record for January 2025.
Chura says, “There’s more and more demand for electricity, more and more need for us to generate electricity. So, as we’re working our way into the future now, we’re going to have to find new sources of energy to generate to make sure we can keep the lights on in Manitoba.”