Brian Zinchuk is editor and owner of Pipeline Online
Wind turbines near Pincher Creek, Alta. Photo by Clive Schaupmeyer
As Saskatchewan’s government spent the last week dealing with how it will keep its lights on in the future, the reliability, or lack thereof, of wind in Alberta was reinforced.
At 9:57 a.m. On Thursday, May 18, Alberta saw its 3,618 megawatts of wind generation fall to 31 megawatts, or 0.9 per cent capacity. At that moment, 26 of 36 wind farms across Alberta were producing zero power to the grid. Collectively, those 36 wind farms consist of hundreds of turbines costing several billion dollars.
And on Saturday, May 20, at 11:25 a.m., wind generation in Alberta fell to 28 megawatts. That’s 0.8 per cent of nameplate capacity.
That’s according to Twitter bot account @ReliableAB, which posts hourly updates of the Alberta electrical grid. It uses data from the Alberta Electric System Operator.
At this moment 83.8% of Alberta's electricity is being produced by fossil fuels. Wind is at 0.8% of capacity and producing 0.3% of total generation, while solar is at 68.1% of capacity and producing 9.62% of total generation. At the same time we are importing 589 MW or 6% pic.twitter.com/L5RZy59Eiq
— Reliable AB Energy (@ReliableAB) May 20, 2023
On May 16, SaskPower president and CEO Rupen Pandya spoke about the reliability of wind and solar power generation. Here are some excerpts of that:
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