Questions and answers
The objections first, because those are the ones worth answering. Every figure below is in the public registry, carries a label saying how good the evidence is, and can be argued with in the forum.
Is this the same Spirited Energy as Manitoba's 2006 slogan?
No. This site is Spirited Energy 2.0, an independent 2026 public filing to the Manitoba Public Utilities Board on winter capacity and recycled heat. It is not Manitoba's 2006 Spirited Energy tourism brand. The operator is Hersh Seth.
Is Manitoba Hydro building a new gas plant in Brandon?
It has applied to. The Brandon dispatchable capacity project would add about 750 MW of natural-gas combustion turbines at the existing Brandon generating station for roughly $3 billion, targeted for service in summer 2030. It is before the Public Utilities Board now, which is why the arithmetic is worth arguing about while it can still change.
Why does Manitoba need more power when it has so much hydro?
Because the problem is power, not energy. Manitoba has substantial dependable energy stored in its reservoirs; the planning problem is the additional coincident megawatts required during winter peaks. Weeks of stored energy are not interchangeable with extra megawatts at the coincident peak. What the system lacks is a few hundred megawatts during the coldest mornings and evenings. Manitoba Hydro projects a shortfall of about 600 MW by 2030 in a drought year. That is a peak-hours problem, and peak-hours problems have cheaper answers than a new power station. Conawapa-class hydro is the right later machine for that capacity path and the wrong clock for 2030. It is not on the winter stack. Gas is not needed if Order 1 shows the hour without new turbines.
What the project actually is · Where the decision stands · Section 1 — the cold morning test
Why not just build Conawapa?
Conawapa-class hydro is the right machine for extended hydro capacity, but it's on the wrong timeline for 2030. It does not fill the 2030 shortfall, it is not on the winter stack, and it is not inside the $1.95 billion. Our approach holds the coincident hour with heat, batteries, demand response, and a tested import, then lets Hydro put the next northern station back on the capacity path. Gas is not needed if Order 1 shows that hour without new turbines.
Isn't gas the only thing that works during a multi-day cold snap?
That is the strongest argument for the gas plant, and it deserves a direct answer. Reservoirs already supply the days; batteries and demand response supply the hours; recovered heat shrinks the need itself. The gas case also has to answer its own record: under questioning at the Public Utilities Board, Manitoba Hydro agreed it had derated the Brandon turbines during three of the top ten multi-day winter peak events of the past decade.
Do gas turbines work in a Manitoba cold snap? · Section 6 — compare both plans, assert neither · Challenge the reliability numbers
Doesn't sewage heat recovery stop working when it gets cold?
No — that is the point of using it. Treated effluent leaves a wastewater plant warm in every season, including January, because it is warmed by the city itself rather than by the weather. Heat pumps lift that low-grade heat into a district loop. The colder it gets outside, the more valuable the heat already in the pipe becomes.
Section 3 — how the plan works · Challenge the heat-recovery numbers
Has sewage heat recovery been done anywhere else?
Yes. Vancouver's False Creek Neighbourhood Energy Utility has heated buildings from sewage heat for more than a decade, and similar systems run in Scandinavia and at Markham in Ontario. What is unusual in Winnipeg is not the technology but the timing: the North End plant is being rebuilt right now, which is the one moment the heat taps are cheap to install.
If the turbines would only run 5% of the time, why does it matter?
Because that is the argument for testing them, not against it. Manitoba Hydro describes the plant as drought protection and capacity insurance, expected to run under 5% of an average year. Insurance is judged on whether it pays out when claimed — and under questioning at the Public Utilities Board, Hydro agreed the existing Brandon turbines were derated during three of the top ten multi-day winter peak events of the past decade. Low utilisation also makes each delivered megawatt-hour expensive: $3 billion of capital sits idle 95% of the year while ratepayers carry it. The question is not whether Manitoba needs insurance. It is whether this is the cheapest insurance that pays out on the coldest morning.
How the hearing works, and how to be heard · File as an organisation · Section 5 — twenty-year cost, not $/firm kW
Doesn't Manitoba Hydro's plan already include wind, efficiency and demand response?
It does, and that is common ground rather than a disagreement. The recommended development plan pairs the gas turbines with roughly 600 MW of wind, 550 MW of efficiency and 310 MW of demand response. This filing does not dispute those. The 150 MW in the hybrid stack is prospective residual demand response, incremental to Hydro's 310 MW, and residual after the 38 MW already removed through recycled heat. It is a planning target with an unfilled inventory, not a contracted resource, and it is not Hydro's 310 counted twice. The filing also adds recovered heat from the North End plant — 38 MW electric credit, not the whole 688 MW stack — and asks that the 750 MW gas block specifically be tested head to head against a portfolio doing the same job. Agreeing on most of a plan is a reason to examine the expensive part of it carefully, not to wave it through.
How much would this save Manitoba ratepayers?
On the filing's own figures, between $2.7 and $5.4 billion over twenty years. The hybrid portfolio costs $1.5–1.8B net of ITC against $4.5–6.9B for the gas path, and the bands do not overlap — the cheapest defensible gas future still costs more than the most expensive defensible hybrid one. Those hybrid bands are domestic capital. They do not include the cost of securing or purchasing the 200 MW winter import counted in the 688 MW planning case, and this file does not identify an existing firm contract. Those are estimates, labelled as such, and open to challenge.
Are heat megawatts the same as electricity megawatts?
No, and conflating them is the accounting error at the centre of this case. A megawatt of heat is not a megawatt of electricity and the two are never added together here. Recovered heat enters the electric ledger only as the net electricity it displaces — at most 38 MW, not the 50 MW of heat it delivers. Every number on this site is kept on one ledger or the other and counted once.
Section 3 — one hub, three books · The registry every figure comes from
What does Lake Winnipeg have to do with an electricity decision?
Both decisions spend against the same inheritance. The external phosphorus gap is about 3,050 tonnes a year against a 1,400-tonne binational target, and the North End rebuild recovers roughly 130 tonnes of that — about 4% of the gap. Manitoba is being asked to carry two three-billion-dollar debts at once, and neither application is required to answer for the other.
Section 11 — honest phosphorus arithmetic · Challenge the water numbers
Is this anti-gas, or anti-Manitoba Hydro?
Neither. The filing does not ask the Board to reject the gas plant. It asks for the two plans to be tested the same way before any capital certificate: head-to-head modelling, an independent cold-weather reliability audit applying identical accreditation rules to both, and machine-readable cost models from both parties. If gas wins that test, it should be built.
How can I check these numbers myself?
Every figure comes from a public registry file, carries a label saying how good the evidence is, and is pinned by an automated test. You can read the registry, run the tests, and read the working. If you find an error, the forum is where to say so — a reviewer who breaks one of these numbers is doing the most useful thing anyone can do here.
The registry and the tests · Peer review — what is open · The forum
Does the 688 MW planning case include power Manitoba cannot yet count?
Yes. Two hundred of those megawatts are an undemonstrated winter import. Without it the stack is 488 MW, which does not cover the 600 MW shortfall. When Manitoba is not importing, lower domestic demand may preserve reservoir water or exports. Those two benefits cannot be counted in the same hour. The $1.95 billion capital figure does not include the cost of securing or purchasing that 200 MW, and this file does not identify an existing firm contract.
Section 3 — the intertie in the planning stack · Section 5 — money · Section 10 — operating case, not a second winter stack
Will converting homes to heat pumps create the 600 MW shortfall?
Hydro has not published how much of the 600 MW comes from heating. Dual-fuel — a heat pump on most days, the existing gas furnace on the coldest hours — adds about 0 MW at the peak. If furnaces come out, 15% of roughly 300,000 gas-heated homes is 45,000 homes. That house count is the same in both megawatt figures. At a round 15 kW of electric backup, 45,000 times 15 kW is 675 MW. At Hydro's 6.4 kW coincident figure for comparable electrically heated homes, the same 45,000 homes are about 288 MW. Those are two readings of one illustrative unmanaged-heating conversion, not Hydro's forecast, and neither is a component of the 600.
Who is behind Spirited Energy?
Hersh Seth, a Winnipeg resident and community organiser with fifteen years in geothermal design and high-efficiency construction. The legal name is Cryotech Climate and Water Management Corporation (TerraFirm). It is not funded by, or affiliated with, any utility, vendor or party to the proceeding. The site names its human and AI operators, and the posting rules and privacy terms are public.
Something here is wrong. Where do I say so?
In the forum, in public. Open discussion is open to anyone with an account and a pseudonym is fine. Peer review — where a verdict can change the filing — is readable by everyone and posted to by reviewers whose qualification has been checked against a public register.