Brian Zinchuk is editor and owner of Pipeline Online
Alberta’s fleet of 1,568 wind turbines across 45 wind farms, and costing many billions of dollars, produced zero power at 11:38 a.m. on Tuesday, July 16.
That’s according to Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO) data, logged hourly by X account @ReliableAB.
At this moment 82.6% of Alberta's electricity is being produced by fossil fuels. Wind is at 0.0% of capacity and producing 0.0% of total generation, while solar is at 86.0% of capacity and producing 12.54% of total generation. At the same time we are importing 118 MW or 1% pic.twitter.com/tkmydVPjGk
— Reliable AB Energy (@ReliableAB) July 16, 2024
At that moment, a genset in a sea can, like the one 500 kilowatt (0.5 megawatt) unit below belonging to Estevan-based Smart Power Systems, would have had a greater output than the entire fleet of Alberta wind turbines across an area larger than the Low Countries in Europe.
A 500 kilowatt generator from Estevan-based Smart Power Systems. That works out to half a megawatt of capacity. All of Alberta’s massive wind fleet was producing less on Tuesday morning than this generator is capable of.
Orange pins are the approximate centre of Alberta’s grid-scale wind faculties, purple are grid-scale solar facilities. The map was prepared by @ReliableAB
At that moment, solar was producing 1,419 megawatts out of a 1650, or 86 per cent capacity. It was producing 12.5 per cent of Alberta’s power at that moment. Hydro was at 336 of 894 megawatts capacity, producing 3.0 per cent of overall power in Alberta. Biomass was producing 213 of 444 megawatts capacity, or 1.9 per cent of all power. Natural gas was producing 9,348 megawatts out of 13,128 megawatts capacity, providing 82.6 per cent of all power. Coal and “dual fuel” (coal and natural gas) are no longer on the board with the repowering of the Genessee Generating Station to natural gas. The province was importing 118 megawatts, which wasn’t a lot, compared to other days.
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Wind power had been low much of the day. At 1:21 is was 14 megawatts. At 6:38 a.m. wind was at 131 megawatts. An hour later, it as 74, then 79, 20, 16 and zero. At 12:38 p.m., wind was producing 5 megawatts. And an hour after that, it was at 17.
This collapse in wind output was substantiated by website Dispatcho.app, which logs the AESO’s minute-by-minute data.
These graphs show Alberta wind output around 1:40 p.m. on July 16. Two hours earlier, wind output, as seen by each graph, was zero. Dispatcho.app
This has happened despite the fact the province has literally doubled down on wind and solar over the last 30 months. Since the beginning of 2022, Alberta has effectively doubled both its solar and wind capacity. As of Jan. 1, 2022, Alberta had 736 megawatts of solar across 13 facilities. That number is now 1,650 megawatts across 44 solar farms. Its wind capacity was 2,269 megawatts of wind across 26 wind farms. Now that number is 4,748 megawatts across 45 wind farms.
At the same time, Alberta’s last six coal generating units have either shut down (Keephills 1), repowered to natural gas or are in the process of doing so (Genesee 1, 2 and 3, Keephills 3, Sundance 4). As of June, Alberta no longer produced coal-fired electricity. Alberta’s last unit, Genessee 3, routinely produced a steady 420 megawatts before it was shut down for repowering to natural gas.
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Whole fleet failure
While other forms of power generation see shutdowns of various generating units due to maintenance, faults, or failures, they never see the entire fleet of that type shut down at the same time. But that’s a frequent occurrence with both wind and solar in Alberta. They have shown their entire fleets of dozens of solar and wind farms dropping to zero power production on several occasions. For solar, it happens each and every night, but for wind, Pipeline Online has reported occurrences of zero power output Feb. 27 and on Jan. 14. A year earlier, on Jan. 11, 2023, Alberta’s wind output fell to 1 megawatt out of then-3,618 megawatts of nameplate capacity.
In Saskatchewan, it has happened seven days in a row, for periods of the day from Jan. 2 to Jan. 8, 2024.
SaskPower is intent on adding an additional 3,000 megawatts of wind and solar to this province’s grid by 2035, in addition to the existing 617 megawatts of grid-scale wind and 30 megawatts of grid-scale solar already installed. All new projects are privately owned and operated independent power producers, and SaskPower requires an indigenous ownership component on all new major wind and solar projects. As part of that 3000 megawatts, the 200 megawatt Bekevar Yotin Wind Facility, near Kipling, is under construction. SaskPower also has another group developing a 100 megawatt solar facility near Estevan. In recent months, announcement have been made for another 200 megawatt wind project at Weyburn, with Enbridge as the lead on that project. And one more 100 megawatt solar facility is in the works for south central Saskatchewan.
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