Analyzing the wind capacity factor for Alberta’s 50 wind farms, and what it means for Saskatchewan

Nov 19, 2025

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Wind turbines near Drumheller. Photo by Katrina Zinchuk

With Enbridge moving forward with permit applications on its Seven Stars Energy Project at Weyburn, one of the questions often asked about wind power generation is how much power does it actually produce?

While SaskPower puts out very little data, just a 24-hour daily average of megawatts output for the entire fleet, Alberta puts out enormous volumes minute-by-minute of data. (Pipeline Online once calculated Alberta puts out over 23,000x the data points SaskPower does.)

For instance, according to X account @ReliableAB, which logs Alberta data, on Tuesday, Nov. 18, the entire fleet of 50 wind farms totalling 5,684 megawatts of nameplate capacity fell to 66 megawatts at 9:59 am (1.2 per cent capacity). But later in the day, it rose to 2007 megawatts at 11:59 p.m. or 35.3 per cent capacity.

But what is the “capacity factor”? If you took the actual output of a facility, divided by its nameplate capacity, and did that average over time, you get the capacity factor. So if a generating unit averages half its nameplate output over a year, it would have a 50 per cent capacity factor. Alternatively, if it produced its full output for six months, and nothing for six months, you would still have a 50 per cent capacity factor.

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What can we really expect for output when a new wind farm, like the one proposed near Weyburn, is built?

Pipeline Online compiled data from the Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO) as logged by the website Dispatcho.app, looking at all 50 wind farms in Alberta. Some wind farms are pushing 20 years old, but the data on Dispatcho.app only goes back to Aug. 26, 2018. That’s still 2,642 days to Nov. 19, 2025, or seven years, two months and 24 days. That’s a comprehensive sample size with several years’ worth of data across 50 wind farms, large and small. It’s about as comprehensive a data set as as you can possibly get.

Dispatcho.app provides a capacity factor calculation when you look up individual generating units. Sometimes several days or even weeks will show up as zero when a generating unit starts reporting. So Pipeline Online went as close as possible to the first day Dispatcho.app logged power to the grid.

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Alberta has 50 wind farms totalling 1760 grid-scale wind turbines. The second last column shows the first data point recorded by Dispatcho.app. Yellow indicates wind farms which were operating Aug. 26, 2018. The final column shows each wind farm’s individual capacity factor from either first being added to the grid or since Aug 26, 2018.

 

Drum roll, please

Based on those numbers, the average capacity factor for all 50 wind farms in Alberta since Aug. 26, 2018 is 29.6 per cent.

If you look at the long-term wind facilities, the ones that have been operating since Aug. 26, 2018, their collective average capacity factor is 33.3 per cent. That’s somewhat surprising, as one might expect the newest farms, with the latest technology, would have a higher capacity factor. But on average, they don’t. The 30 wind farms that went online over the last seven years have a collective average of 27 per cent capacity factor.

And bigger doesn’t necessarily mean better. The ten largest wind farms, with 196 or more megawatts (thus comparable to the series of 200 megawatt wind farms in Saskatchewan) have a collective 28 per cent capacity factor.

There are some other notable data points. Halkirk 2 only produced power for a few days in November, 2024, until one of the turbine nacelles fell to the ground, and hasn’t produced an electron since. If you exclude Halkirk 2 from the fleetwide average capacity, you got 30.2 per cent capacity factor from the remaining 49 wind farms.

This Nov. 18, 2024 photo by Edgar Oliver shows what was left of the T33 turbine at the Halkirk 2 wind farm. Photo by Edgar Oliver

Alberta’s largest wind farm, Buffalo Plains, went online just over a year ago, around Aug. 28, 2024. Despite being new and the largest, its capacity factor so far has been just 16.6 megawatts.

Fleet-wide, only two facilities have seen more than 40 per cent capacity factors. Bull Creek 1 saw 46.8 per cent, and Whitla 1 saw 43 per cent. None saw 50 per cent.

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Saskatchewan application

Saskatchewan can generally forecast its weather by taking Alberta’s weather from the day before. If Alberta’s wind capacity factor is either 29.6 or 30.2 per cent, you could generally say a 30 per cent capacity factor could be expected for Saskatchewan wind. And that’s being generous, since certain parts of Alberta, like Pincher Creek, are notably much more windy that Saskatchewan (with road signs along the highway warning semis they could topple over from the wind, which does indeed happen.)

At least, that’s what the Alberta numbers imply. But the capacity factor may vary for Saskatchewan.

SaskPower’s website describing wind power has a video that says, “Wind power is only about 40 per cent reliable.” This is the video from that page.

Another X account, @SKElectricity, logs SaskPower’s daily data. On that site, it says the year end statistics for wind show 251 megawatts, or 39 per cent capacity factor, for the year ending Dec. 31, 2024.

Here’s is some more detailed wind analysis over the last 12 months from @SKElectricity, as of Nov. 19, 2025:

 

So there you go: Alberta’s much larger sample set shows a 30 per cent capacity factor for wind on the southern plains. Based on that number, a 200 megawatt wind facility, like Assiniboia’s Golden South, Kipling’s Bekevar, or the proposed Seven Stars at Weyburn, a likely expectation of capacity factor would be an average 60 megawatts output throughout the year. Thus, while they may be called “200 megawatt wind farms,” the reality is they will likely average 60 megawatts each.

But Saskatchewan’s much more opaque numbers show a 39.6 per cent capacity factor, which would equate to an expectation of 79 megawatts from a “200 megawatt wind farm.” Thus, Saskatchewan may indeed be more favourable to wind generation than Alberta.

 

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