Canada’s Northern Supergrid: Technical Report

Canada’s economy in the second quarter of the 21st century is being built on the dynamic economic and security development growth of the Northern and Arctic regions, making them more resilient. A critical infrastructure foundation for this growth is advanced electricity transmission connecting the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic coasts.

To address electricity needs in the North and the Arctic, the interprovincial transmission grid in the National Energy Corridor has to be scaled up by adding a major national-level infrastructure — the Northern Supergrid located close to the provincial-territorial border and linked by power lines with the Arctic coast.

A phased long-term approach to deploy the Northern Supergrid includes installing a multi-terminal, multi-vendor HVDC transmission system with six Voltage Source Converters (VSC) in selected locations in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, and Newfoundland and Labrador.

To better define economic opportunities proposed by the Northern Supergrid, a planning matrix determined by the “east-west” oriented Northern Corridor and the “north-south” oriented Economic and Security Corridors is presented. Leveraging this planning matrix, an inter-provincial infrastructure mega-loop principle is proposed. Based on this principle, Canada’s Southern and Northern Supergrids can be linked in an interprovincial transmission loop from coast to coast. The transmission mega-loop will enable power flow to meet industrial, security and community demand levels currently required across the country.