Brian Zinchuk is editor and owner of Pipeline Online
Alberta wind turbines. File Photo by Clive Schaupmeyer
Alberta wind power does not frequently exceed 75 per cent capacity, but it was doing just that on Friday night/Saturday early morning.
X account @ReliableAB, which posts hourly logs of minute-by-minute data published by the Alberta Electric System Operator. At 9:59 pm. on Friday, Nov. 6, wind output hit 4,508 megawatts, or 79.3 per cent capacity. At that moment, wind was providing 39.6 per cent of all generation in Alberta. Several wind farms were running at or just below maximum rated output. You can find @ReliableAB’s post for that moment here.
At that moment, gas was cranked down to 6,588 megawatts, or 46.4 per cent of its capacity. Solar was zip because it was after dark. Hydro was turned down to just 82 megawatts out of 896 capacity. Doing so would allow reservoirs to fill, providing additional energy storage for later use. Biomass was at 210 megawatts out of 485 capacity. Battery output was unneeded and therefor zero.
The province was exporting 402 megawatts, but none to Saskatchewan. That’s likely because weather site Windy.com showed substantial wind across southern Alberta and Saskatchewan.
The high wind output also resulted in yet again seeing the pool price in Alberta fall to zero dollars per megawatt-hour for five hours throughout the day. Two hours occurred at 4 and 5 a.m. The remaining three were from 9, 10 and 11 p.m. Unless generators have special arrangements, they get paid the pool price, which for five hours on Friday was less than the price of a Timbit. That’s because you have to at least pay something for a Timbit.
While that’s great for the consumer, it’s not so great for generators who have to pay for things like fuel, staff, or the capital cost of building their facilities.
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