Hydro Ottawa Holding Inc. is 100 percent owned by the City of Ottawa. It is a private company, registered under the Ontario Business Corporations Act, and overseen by an independent Board of Directors consisting of eleven members appointed by City Council. In 2007, Hydro Ottawa Holding Inc. owned and operated three subsidiary companies. The core businesses of the Corporation are electricity distribution, renewable energy generation and related services.
The three subsidiaries are:
Hydro Ottawa Limited
Hydro Ottawa is a regulated electricity local distribution company that owns and operates distribution infrastructure in the City of Ottawa and the Village of Casselman. As the second largest municipally-owned local distribution company in Ontario, Hydro Ottawa maintains one of the safest, most reliable and cost-effective electricity distribution systems in Ontario and serves approximately 287,000 residential and commercial customers across a service area of 1,104 square kilometres (km2). The company added more than 4,600 net new customers to its distribution system in 2007, an increase of 1.8 percent. The company’s assets grew by $10.7 million, or 1.7 percent, and the volume of electricity delivered through its distribution network grew by 1.8 percent.
Energy Ottawa Inc.
Energy Ottawa is a generator of renewable energy and provider of commercial energy management services. Its twin eight megawatt run-of-the-river hydroelectric facilities at Chaudière Falls in the city’s core produce almost 120,000-megawatt hours (MWh) of Tier III EcoLogoM certified green power – the greenest electricity in Canada. The recently commissioned Trail Road plant – a joint venture 60 percent owned by Energy Ottawa – converts millions of tonnes of previously wasted methane gas into renewable energy. Together, this output amounts to about 2 percent of Ottawa’s total electricity requirement, enough to meet the annual needs of more than 17,000 homes. In 2007, the company added 5.7 megawatts of generation capacity, an increase of more than 35 percent.
Telecom Ottawa Holding Inc.
Telecom Ottawa is a specialized telecommunications carrier that provides broadband facilities and Internet access to the metro Ottawa region. It owns and operates a 10-gigabit ethernet Internet Protocol (IP) network with more than 1,250 km of fibre optic cable. This broadband infrastructure provides high-speed connectivity and reliable network performance to federal, provincial and municipal offices, universities, schools, hospitals, major telecommunications carriers and over 200 businesses. The company serves more than 95 percent of Ottawa’s MUSH (municipalities, universities, schools and hospitals) sector. In 2007, the company increased the number of commercial buildings accessing its network by 11 percent, grew its IP broadband business by 17 percent, and added 72 route kilometres to its network. In 2007, the Board of Directors approved a plan to sell Telecom Ottawa and to exit this business segment, leading to a definitive sale agreement in February 2008 for gross proceeds of $63 million, subject to post-closing adjustments.