A few weeks after Alberta’s grid was on the brink, renewables again bottom out, but no crisis this time

Brian Zinchuk

Brian Zinchuk is editor and owner of Pipeline Online

Wind turbines near Pincher Creek, Alberta, on Dec. 1, 2023. Photo by Brian Zinchuk

At suppertime on Sunday, Feb. 4, Alberta saw its wind power generation fall to 15 megawatts out of 4,481 megawatts, or one-third of one per cent (0.3 per cent) at 5:38 p.m. This was at the same time solar was producing zero megawatts as the sun had gone down.

That’s according to data from the Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO), as recorded by X bot account @ReliableAB, which publishes hourly updates on the Alberta grid.

https://x.com/ReliableAB/status/1754310260897010065?s=20

At that moment, 93.5 per cent of Alberta’s power was coming from natural gas and coal, but mostly natural gas. Something was up at the Genessee Power Station, where the two coal units (400 and 420 megawatts in capacity) and one dual-fuel coal/natural gas unit (466 megawatts in capacity) were each off and on for a period of time since Feb. 1. Genessee Unit 2 was offline at suppertime on Sunday.

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Alberta was importing 400 megawatts at the time, 201 from British Columbia, 90 from Saskatchewan and 100 from Montana.

Total load was 10,788 megawatts, and internal Alberta generation was 10,388 megawatts. That was roughly 1,500 megawatts less than the peak demand in mid-January which had the province go into grid alerts.

Throughout the evening, three of Alberta’s 10 grid-scale batteries were putting out nine megawatts each for most of three hours, according to Dispatcho.app, a website which logs the minute-by-minute data from the AESO. This is a new behaviour that also took place on Feb. 2. These three batteries, eReserve 7, 8 and 9 have been used as a group in patterns different that the previous seven batteries. From Dec. 19 to January 16, they were called upon to each provide 5 megawatts during the supper hour each day. It appears that different modes are being tested with this set.

The province’s wind power hovered below 100 megawatts from 3:39 p.m. until at least around 10 p.m.

Solar didn’t have much of a day on Sunday, with the highest recorded output by @ReliableAB showing 473 megawatts out of 1,650 at 1:38 pm (28.7 per cent of capacity). It likely didn’t help that snow was falling in parts of southern Alberta earlier in the day. But the milder conditions, around -6 C definitely did.

• 0079 Ministry of Energy Business_incentive PO
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• 0078 LHOS 2024
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• 0077 Caprice Resources Stand Up For Free Speech
  0077 Caprice Resources Stand Up For Free Speech
• 0053 Kingston Midstream Westspur Alameda
  0053 Kingston Midstream Westspur Alameda
• 0076 Latus only
  0076 Latus only
• 0073 SaskWorks-Pipeline Online
  0073 SaskWorks-Pipeline Online
• 0063 Turnbull Excavating hiring crusher
  0063 Turnbull Excavating hiring crusher
• 0061 SIMSA 2024 For Sask Buy Sask
  0061 SIMSA 2024 For Sask Buy Sask
• 0058 Royal Helium Steveville opens anonymous rocket
  0058 Royal Helium Steveville opens anonymous rocket
• 0055 Smart Power Be Smart with your Power office
  0055 Smart Power Be Smart with your Power office
• 0051 JML Hiring Pumpjack assembly
  0051 JML Hiring Pumpjack assembly
• 0049 Scotsburn Dental soft guitar
  0049 Scotsburn Dental soft guitar
• 0046 City of Estevan This is Estevan
  0046 City of Estevan This is Estevan
• 0041 DEEP Since 2018 now we are going to build
  0041 DEEP Since 2018 now we are going to build
• 0032 IWS Summer hiring rock trailer music
• 0022 Grimes winter hiring
• 0021 OSY Rentals S8 Promo
• 0018 IWS Hiring Royal Summer
• 0013 Panther Drilling PO ad 03 top drive rigs
• 0011
• 0006 JK Junior
• 0002 gilliss casing services
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