What We Do

Five Nations Energy delivers electricity from 80 km north of Moosonee to Fort Albany, Kashechewan, Attawapiskat, and to the line that connects the Victor Diamond Mine. We deliver electricity safely and reliably over the Omushkego Ishkotayo lines owned by Five Nations. We are the only First Nations owned electricity transmission company in Canada. We are a non-profit corporation and focus not on profit, but on providing the best service and providing benefits to our owner communities.

Five Nations provides other services related to the delivery of electricity to the Local Distribution Companies (LDCs) and maintenance and upgrading.

We don't generate power - we deliver it to substations in each community. We also do not buy or sell the electricity. We own and maintain the main power line and the sub-stations that deliver high-voltage electricity to the substations and drop the voltage down for local distribution. We are the line that connects the individual communities with the Provincial transmission system.

We restore power in case of outages or emergencies on the main power line, and assist the LDCs with training and support their operations and maintenance.

The services Five Nations Energy Inc provides are regulated by the Ontario Energy Board, this includes the rates that are charged for transmitting electricity.

Five Nations Energy Inc is committed to providing the best service it can to the Attawapiskat Power Corporation, the Kashechewan Power Corporation, the Fort Albany Power Corporation and the communities they serve. To ensure that the service level provided by FNEI remains high, Five Nations is constantly upgrading the services and strives to ensure that there are as few outages and service interruptions as possible. Some future upgrades include the finalization of the system upgrades that will enable FNEI to provide electricity to the Victor Diamond Mine, which will more than double the capacity of the Five Nations line to 80 MW. The construction of this line has been completed and will be energized soon.

The installation of fibre optic telecommunications to the communities will allow FNEI to carry out better monitoring of its' system, and some strands of the fibre optic system will be made available for significant telecommunications improvements for the communities. This project is underway and the system should be available for monitoring of the system by the end of November 2008. Provision of the new telecommunications services to the communities is being undertaken by the Western James Bay Telecommunications Network, not by Five Nations Energy Inc.

FNEI is undertaking upgrades to the substations and changes to the line in order to improve safety, reliability, and improved performance. A second transformer has been installed in the communities of Attawapiskat and Fort Albany and placed "on potential". This significantly reduces the length of potential power outages in the communities; it means that if the primary transformer at the substation is damaged, power can be restored to the community within a few hours. Without the second transformer standing by, it could take weeks to restore power. A second transformer has been ordered and some of the site engineering work competed for the community of Kashechewan. This work was postponed due to the uncertainty as to whether or not the community would relocate and therefore make any system upgrades redundant. At this time, it is anticipated that the second transformer in Kashechewan will be energized by May 2009.

Repairs and upgrades of berm walls to prevent/reduce outages caused by flooding and ice damage during spring break-ups have been completed. Switches have been installed so that damage and power outages can be isolated, allowing some of the communities to have power restored immediately while other portions of the transmission line are repaired. In addition, FNEI plans to construct a garage to store vehicles and equipment in the community of Fort Albany.

 

 
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