Hello Tin Man & Edgy... I have a 2 part answer for your electricity question...

First, the "simple" answer. The simple answer is "yes", from a lineman standpoint, it would be possible to add more power to an electrical system with several options... First, adding a wire to each phase on a 115,000 volt line is possible. There are some complications to this however. You cannot add wires to an existing powerline energized at 115,000 volts (115 kv) while it is energized. You can sting the line out on dollys below the existing line (like 20 feet below if space allows) but you have to de-energize and ground the line in order to move it up into position which would require additional hardware on the end of the insulator strings to support 2 conductor shoes instead of 1. All deadend hardware would also have to be replaced as you now have 2 wires deadending instead of 1. I had the opportunity to install the deadend hardware on a small piece of new line I helped build at Riel Station East of Winnipeg. That was a 500,000 volt, 3 wire line. So, any line that must be re-furbished this way must have a lot of power outages or 1 long outage to get these lines in place.

The second option would be to double the voltage. When you double the voltage, you cut the amperage in half and amperage is what causes the heat that is the deciding factor in how much power you can put down that line.

Now for the complicated part... There are a lot of Engineering factors involved with upgrading any line. In Manitoba, our 115 kv lines are built in an H-Line configuration. This means 2 poles set approx. 8 - 10 meters apart with a single pole spar arm crossing them around 6 feet from the top. They will have an X-brace or 2 depending how tall the structure is. The issue with this "clearances" between the lines and the structure and between the lines themselves. Also, you would need to add insulators in all the insulator strings in the whole line. This can be done with "live line" methods which means less outage times but again, pretty labour intensive and hence, costly. Also, it would mean changing out any and all station step down transformers which would probably run in the 10ish plus million per transformer. This would not include the "main supply" transformer where the power would originate from which would be much larger to supply all the downstream power and cost substantially more...

The major factor in any upgrades is the Engineered "safety factor" installed in the lines. I took some Engineering about 22 years ago and seem to recall that there is a 2.5 - 3 times safety factor engineered into transmission lines compared to a 1.5 safety factor put into the distribution lines that feed power to the transformers at your house/apartment. This means that the clearances need to be wider and the size of poles/strength of steel in the structures built to carry the lines needs to be a lot more... This could be a factor limiting the options for any existing line. No engineer will put his name/engineering stamp on a 30+ year old line to double the weight of conductors on it... That would be engineering suicide.

New lines being built? No problems. Just put in a "Triangle plate" at the end of your Insulator strings and install double wires for each phase. You also need a few spacers/vibration dampers between the double lines in each span between structures but building that in to a new line is the least expensive option if you can't use a single wire due to the amperage carrying capacity of the wire itself. That may be the single most easiest way (and least expensive in the final tally due to numerous more factors that all cost lots of money) is to simply build a new line with enough capacity to meet the requirements of any given area. Taking into consideration the fact that the Ring of Fire is looking at mining for a century or longer, that may be the best option in the long run! Now, where that power is generated is also a major factor. Does it come from Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba? The "grid" needs to be able to handle the additional power for a very long time. Also, there needs to be generated somewhere also for a very long time.

All of these factors can run the costs into the billions of dollars as Manitoba is finding out. What started out as an additional line from the Manitoba North to send the power down from a new generating station (which at first was supposed to be Conawopa, spelling???) has now turned into building a HUGE convertor station (Riel Convertor Station just East of Winnipeg converting from the 450,000 volt Direct Current or DC power sent down from the north to a 500,000 volt AC or Alternating Current power sent to large power terminals), another large convertor station up north (Keewatinohk Convertor Station at the literal end of the road up north which changes the power that comes from the generating stations at around 110,000 volts AC to 450,000 volts DC). Then they decided to build a different Hydro Electric Dam (Keeyask Generating Station) which needed "collector lines" between it and this new Keewatinohk Convertor station. Instead of the "few" billion dollars first projected to bring more power down from Northern Manitoba, it was over 25 Billion dollars the last time I heard and may be more by now...

So there you have it, where does the power come from and how much line needs to be built and finally, what kind of Station Transformation is required to handle ALL of the equipment needed to run an area as large as the Ring of Fire? Please don't ask me to guess because that is WAY above my pay grade LOL. Thankfully, there are much smarter people than me who can look at all of the factors involved to get power to the north and probably have already. It's one of those "secrets" that you and I don't need to know about because everything is Top Secret in the Ring of Fire (wink, wink, nudge, nudge). Hopefully you all can get something out of this Novel to help you understand some of the logistics of getting power into a new area, especially when long distances are involved. Long distance means voltage loss which means higher voltage to transmit electricity and/or larger or pairing or tripling of wires per phase to get the necessary power to where you need it...

Herb