Brian Zinchuk is editor and owner of Pipeline Online
Bekevar Wind Facility near Kipling on Nov. 15. Not one turbine was turning that evening, either. Photo by Brian Zinchuk
On Saturday, March 29, the 817 megawatts of wind capacity connected to the SaskPower grid produced an average of one, singular megawatt over the course of 24 hours.
That’s according to SaskPower’s Where Your Power Comes From webpage.
But it’s actually worse than that, as the 24 hour average masks another reality.
Pipeline Online inquired to SaskPower and was told by email that wind output was at 0 megawatts from 12 a.m. to 6 p.m. that day, for a total of 18 hours. That’s a total flatline of wind power generation. In other words, the genset you take camping could have produced more power than the entire fleet of wind turbines across Saskatchewan.
If you lived in Saskatoon and relied on wind to charge your electric snowblower to dig yourself out, you would have been totally out of luck most of the day.
One megawatt equates to 0.1 per cent of nameplate capacity. Based on the Bekevar Wind Facility costing in the range of $345 million for a 200 megawatt facility, the collective 817 megawatt capacity of Saskatchewan’s grid-scale wind cost in excess of a billion dollars. However, most of the grid-scale wind generation facilities in Saskatchewan are owned and operated by independent power producers which sell their power to SaskPower. If they produce no power, they don’t get paid.
On March 29, natural gas produced a 24 hour average of 1,883 megawatts, or 62 per cent of all power, while coal produced 702 megawatts, or 23 per cent of all power generated. X account @SkElectricity recorded those numbers from SaskPower’s Where Your Power Comes From webpage.
Where our power came from: pic.twitter.com/z1S7kw5Rlg
— Saskatchewan Electricity Mix (@SkElectricity) March 31, 2025
The following day, Sunday, March 30, the 24-hour average from wind was 12 megawatts, or 1.2 per cent of capacity. According to SaskPower, there was zero wind output for four hours, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
The argument is often made that if the wind isn’t blowing here, it’s blowing somewhere else. So if you build enough wind generating capacity over a large enough area, you should always have at least some output.
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But Alberta, too, saw minimal wind conditions over the weekend. X account @ReliableAB provides a continual log of power generation in Alberta, using data from the Alberta Electric System Operator.
At 1:59 p.m. on March 29, @ReliableAB reported, “At this moment 89.2% of Alberta’s electricity is being produced by fossil fuels. Wind is at 1.4% of capacity and producing 0.8% of total generation, while solar is at 34.0% of capacity and producing 6.3% of total generation. At the same time, we are importing 635 MW, which is 6.4% of the total generation of 9907 MW.
At this moment 89.2% of Alberta's electricity is being produced by fossil fuels. Wind is at 1.4% of capacity and producing 0.8% of total generation, while solar is at 34.0% of capacity and producing 6.3% of total generation. At the same time, we are importing 635 MW, which is… pic.twitter.com/FyZfC4EXZc
— Reliable AB Energy (@ReliableAB) March 29, 2025
That 1.4 per cent was 77 megawatts out of 5,688 megawatts installed capacity across the province.
Between Alberta and Saskatchewan’s combined 6,505 megawatts of grid-scale wind capacity, at that moment the two provinces combined were seeing only 77 megawatts of wind power generation.
The following morning, with solar at zero, 95.1 per cent of the total generation was coming from natural gas-fired power generation.
At 5:59 a.m. on March 30, @ReliableAB reported, “At this moment 95.1% of Alberta’s electricity is being produced by fossil fuels. Wind is at 1.4% of capacity and producing 0.8% of total generation, while solar is at 0% of capacity and producing 0% of total generation. At the same time, we are importing 548 MW, which is 5.7% of the total generation of 9541 MW.”
That’s significant, because the Liberal federal government’s goal through its Clean Electricity Regulations, finalized in December, 2024, aim to “enable significant greenhouse gas reductions to ensure a net-zero electricity grid by 2050.” That’s actually significantly watered down, as the draft version of the regulations would have required the elimination of all fossil fuel fired power generation by 2035, unless it was equipped with carbon capture and storage technology with standards that have not yet been reached by SaskPower’s Boundary Dam 3 project in over 10 years of operation.
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