Expansion
From its modest beginnings, with a single 70 kW generating plant powering a small area of central Halifax, the growth of the company's electrical generation capacity was steady and significant over the years. When NSLP ceased operations in January 1972, it was producing 1.82 million net kilowatt hours, through a network of three thermal generating stations and 15 hydro stations, in addition to its connections to the interprovincial power grid.[14]
In 1902, the company commissioned a new 1000 kW coal-fired thermal generating station on Lower Water Street, near the corner of Morris Street.[15] NSLP continued to grow its capacity, both with frequent expansions of the Halifax plant, construction of hydro generating plants in rural areas, and acquisitions of smaller companies throughout rural Nova Scotia. The first of these, in 1929, was the Avon River Power Company, which served the Town of Windsor and other parts of the Annapolis Valley. Under its Avon River subsidiary, NSLP continued to acquire small and municipally owned systems in Annapolis, Kings and Hants counties over the next few decades. The company also took over companies in eastern Lunenburg, Queens, Yarmouth and northern Nova Scotia.[16]
In 1935, NSLP took over the operations of the Dartmouth Gas & Electric Light & Heating & Power Company Limited, having laid its first underwater cable across the Halifax Harbour to Dartmouth in 1917.[17]
At the time the company adopted the NSLP name in 1928, its electric operations served about 20,000 customers with 600 miles of lines; by 1948, the number of customers had tripled, and line-miles had quadrupled to 2400 miles.[18]
NSLP continued to produce gas exclusively from Nova Scotia-mined coal, opening a new gas plant on Lower Water Street in 1917. The final expansion of gas operations occurred in 1942, and in 1948 the system added its last major customer, supplying gas to the new Victoria General Hospital in Halifax.[19] In the post-war period, gas production remained mostly steady between 190 and 200 million cubic feet per year, but rising coal and labour costs made the operation only marginally profitable. Efforts to sell the division failed. The gas system was abandoned in 1953 and all gas lines under Halifax streets were purged.[20]
Beginning in the late 1920s, NSLP began an aggressive program of rural electrification, designed to bring electric service to remote areas of the province then without access to the NSLP system or the Crown-owned Nova Scotia Power Commission (NSPC). The program was slowed by the depression, then halted in 1939 with the outbreak of World War II but resumed in 1945. During the post-war period the company built more than 1300 miles of new line and added almost 9000 new rural customers. It declared the program largely completed by 1951.[21] The company's major thermal generating station, on Lower Water Street in Halifax, was expanded several times over the years, the last being a 90,000 kW addition in 1956. It continued to operate until 1986 and was formally decommissioned in 1992.[22] But as early as 1954 the company recognized the demand for power would exceed the capacity of the plant, and announced it was planning to construct a new 100,000 kW facility at Tufts Cove in Dartmouth. That plant, designed to burn both coal and oil, began producing power in 1965. Within four years work had begun to double the capacity of the Tufts Cove Generating Station.[23]
Other major post-war projects included hydro projects on the Black River (1953) and at Lequille (1968). The latter was built to replicate an historic grist mill on the site of North America's first such mill in 1607, and dedicated to Canada's Centennial. When it was opened, in a lavish ceremony featuring costumed Indigenous and European re-enactors, Nova Scotia Lieutenant Governor Victor deB. Oland praised the company as "a very good corporate citizen."[24]
In 1956, NSLP commissioned at its own expense a pair of studies into the viability of commercial tidal power development at the head of the Bay of Fundy. The two studies, by Stone & Webster and by Montreal Engineering Company, independently concluded that millions of horsepower could be harnessed from Fundy but that development costs would be commercially prohibitive at that time.[25] Successor Nova Scotia Power opened North America's first tidal power installation on the Bay of Fundy in 1984.[26]
NSLP promoted the use of electric power to consumers by opening a chain of retail stores in 1951, marketing both household and commercial appliances. The retail program was intended to “create and stimulate public acceptance of electric appliances” [27] and featured “nationally known lines” of water heaters, dishwashers, dryers and other products not yet in wide use.[28] The chain's flagship store was prominently located in Halifax, in the Capitol Theatre building at the corner of Spring Garden Road and Barrington Street, also home to the company's head offices. Other stores were located in Dartmouth, on Portland Street at Prince, and in the towns of Windsor, Chester and Yarmouth. New appliance showrooms were opened as late as 1969, in Halifax's Scotia Square mall and in Greenwood in the Annapolis Valley. The retail operation added almost $1.5 million to the company's bottom line that year.[29]
In 1971, the last full year of its independent existence, NSLP employed 1001 employees, compared to 1168 in 1969. The reduction was the result of the wind-up of the company's transit operations. Employment levels were consistent between 1100 and 1200 for the previous two decades.[30]
