Brian Zinchuk is editor and owner of Pipeline Online
Image licensed to Brian Zinchuk via Storyblocks
I’ve been warning for over two years now – overdependence on unreliable wind and solar power is going to lead to rolling blackouts. And that’s exactly what happened in Alberta on Friday, April 5.
It’s a situation of boiling a frog, but we’re the ones in the pot.
The province had a “grid alert” two days before, during the evening of Wednesday, April 4 due to an unexpected outage of thermal generation. And on Friday morning, a combination of factors resulted in the Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO) shedding load in rotating blackouts during its second grid alert in three days.
Notably, this was not a situation of excess demand due to high heat or low temperatures. It was a situation of not enough supply.
The first grid alert came within hours of power prices flatlining to zero because of excessive renewable generation. From Wednesday morning to Wednesday evening, that price went from zero to $999.99 per megawatt and a grid alert being issued. That day, some generating units “had chosen to be off for economics,” according to the AESO. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to burn fuel to generate power when the price was zero, can you? As wind and solar had distorted the market, there wasn’t enough power available when push came to shove when the sun went down.
According to a media briefing provided by the AESO later on April 5, there were several factors with regards to that morning’s grid alert and subsequent rolling blackouts. Several power plants were in maintenance mode due to this being the “shoulder season,” when power demand is lower since it’s neither too cold, requiring lots of power for heating, or too hot, requiring lots of power for air conditioning. (It’s also a lot cooler for the staff doing work in thermal plants in the spring and fall versus a blistering summer day).
AESO overestimated the amount of renewable power that would be available the morning of April 5 by about 900 megawatts. Since the sun wasn’t due to be producing any real power by that time, we’re talking a 900 megawatt shortfall in wind. It declared a Level 3 grid alert at 6:49 a.m. At 8:39 a.m., solar was just coming onboard with 37 megawatts, and wind was just 227 megawatts, or 5.1 per cent of its nameplate 4,481 megawatt capacity.
But then the Keephills 2 natural gas-fired unit went offline at 8:49 a.m., tripping off 400 megawatts. The net result was a shortfall of 250 megawatts which needed to be shed across the system. This was spread out in multiple locations across the province, including parts of Edmonton and Calgary, but with attention to not turning off the power to places like hospitals. It lasted from 8:53 a.m. to 9:16 a.m., a total of 23 minutes. Media reports indicated varying lengths of time below that number for outages in different area.
The AESO threw everything they could into the system – most, but not all, of the 10 grid-scale batteries and hydro. The Brazeau dam was cranked wide open, pumping out 344 megawatts of its 350 megawatt capacity. Interties from neighbouring jurisdictions Saskatchewan, Montana and British Columbia were called upon as well. And by 11 a.m., Alberta’s grid was back on track.
So, all’s well that ends well, right?
Absolutely wrong.
- 0084 EMP Metals Pipeline Online0084 EMP Metals Pipeline Online
- 0053 Kingston Midstream Westspur Alameda Click0053 Kingston Midstream Westspur Alameda Click
- 0082 CsHM 2024 Pipeline0082 CsHM 2024 Pipeline
- 0077 Caprice Resources Stand Up For Free Speech0077 Caprice Resources Stand Up For Free Speech
- 0076 Latus only0076 Latus only
- 0061 SIMSA 2024 For Sask Buy Sask0061 SIMSA 2024 For Sask Buy Sask
- 0055 Smart Power Be Smart with your Power office0055 Smart Power Be Smart with your Power office
- 0051 JML Hiring Pumpjack assembly0051 JML Hiring Pumpjack assembly
- 0049 Scotsburn Dental soft guitar0049 Scotsburn Dental soft guitar
- 0046 City of Estevan This is Estevan0046 City of Estevan This is Estevan
- 0041 DEEP Since 2018 now we are going to build0041 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 services0002 gilliss casing services
- 9002 Pipeline Online 30 sec EBEX9002 Pipeline Online 30 sec EBEX
- 9001
As I keep saying, Alberta’s got more coal, oil, and natural gas than God, because he gave all of his to Alberta. The only way that province should ever be running short of any type of energy or power is as a result of sheer and utter incompetence at the top.
A lot of the blame has been placed on the New Democratic Party under Rachel Notley, who dramatically accelerated elimination of reliable, dispatchable baseload coal from Alberta’s power generation, and strongly promoted the development of unreliable, and undispatchable wind and solar.
However, one should note that the Jason Kenney United Conservative Party administration didn’t do much to reverse Notley’s efforts. Under Kenney and then Danielle Smith, Alberta’s wind and solar generation capacity has doubled since Jan. 1, 2022, and the last coal plant is set to go offline soon, to be transformed to natural gas.
Most people applaud the coal-to-gas conversions that occurred at most of Alberta coal’s plants in recent years (some units simply shut down). They do so because of lower greenhouse gas emissions and lower pollution overall. And while those are valid points, at least when it comes to reducing NOx, SOx, particulates and such, eliminating coal exposes the Alberta grid to yet another vulnerability, one that was exposed in Texas in recent years. Texas, which got all the coal, oil and gas that God didn’t give to Alberta, has seen similar woes as it, too, has been abandoning coal for wind and solar.
- 0084 EMP Metals Pipeline Online0084 EMP Metals Pipeline Online
- 0053 Kingston Midstream Westspur Alameda Click0053 Kingston Midstream Westspur Alameda Click
- 0082 CsHM 2024 Pipeline0082 CsHM 2024 Pipeline
- 0077 Caprice Resources Stand Up For Free Speech0077 Caprice Resources Stand Up For Free Speech
- 0076 Latus only0076 Latus only
- 0061 SIMSA 2024 For Sask Buy Sask0061 SIMSA 2024 For Sask Buy Sask
- 0055 Smart Power Be Smart with your Power office0055 Smart Power Be Smart with your Power office
- 0051 JML Hiring Pumpjack assembly0051 JML Hiring Pumpjack assembly
- 0049 Scotsburn Dental soft guitar0049 Scotsburn Dental soft guitar
- 0046 City of Estevan This is Estevan0046 City of Estevan This is Estevan
- 0041 DEEP Since 2018 now we are going to build0041 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 services0002 gilliss casing services
- 9002 Pipeline Online 30 sec EBEX9002 Pipeline Online 30 sec EBEX
- 9001
Something most people never think about is that natural gas is a just-in-time fuel source. If the pipelines stop running for whatever reason, your power plant rapidly runs out of fuel and the lights go out. This happened in Texas during that big winter storm a few years ago because apparently no one there figured they should winterize their entire natural gas infrastructure, because, after all, it’s Texas.
Coal, on the other hand, can be stored in massive stockpiles with weeks of fuel on site. This was a key issue when the floods of 2011 hit the Estevan area. Making sure the coal stocks were sufficient was paramount – and they did just that.
Image licensed to Brian Zinchuk via Storyblocks
Boiling a frog
But I digress. The key issue here is the normalization of instability of the electrical grid in one of the most energy-rich jurisdictions on the planet, in a 21st century First World economy.
First grid alerts have become more and more common. Then there was a close call in January after four days in a row of grid alerts, but no rolling blackouts occurred. Now, in April, rolling blackouts did occur, but it was not big deal, right? People coped. After all, it wasn’t -35 C, like it was in January.
It’s the frog-in-a-boiling-pot effect. Between 2006 and 2017, Alberta had three Level 3 grid alerts. Since 2021, it’s had 19, according to X account @ReliableAB, which provides hourly monitoring of the grid in recent years. It’s the normalization of what should never, ever be normal in our economy, be it Alberta, Saskatchewan, or anywhere in Canada. The normalization of power instability in South Africa has become increasingly worse to the point that society is on the verge of collapse.
We’re along ways from that, but we should never allow ourselves to even be on that path. And we are on that path.
How many more grid alerts will Alberta endure? Will the pattern continue, as it has for the last two years, towards increasingly serious situations? Will rolling blackouts become normalized? Will they become more common, and longer in length, during more severe weather?
- 0084 EMP Metals Pipeline Online0084 EMP Metals Pipeline Online
- 0053 Kingston Midstream Westspur Alameda Click0053 Kingston Midstream Westspur Alameda Click
- 0082 CsHM 2024 Pipeline0082 CsHM 2024 Pipeline
- 0077 Caprice Resources Stand Up For Free Speech0077 Caprice Resources Stand Up For Free Speech
- 0076 Latus only0076 Latus only
- 0061 SIMSA 2024 For Sask Buy Sask0061 SIMSA 2024 For Sask Buy Sask
- 0055 Smart Power Be Smart with your Power office0055 Smart Power Be Smart with your Power office
- 0051 JML Hiring Pumpjack assembly0051 JML Hiring Pumpjack assembly
- 0049 Scotsburn Dental soft guitar0049 Scotsburn Dental soft guitar
- 0046 City of Estevan This is Estevan0046 City of Estevan This is Estevan
- 0041 DEEP Since 2018 now we are going to build0041 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 services0002 gilliss casing services
- 9002 Pipeline Online 30 sec EBEX9002 Pipeline Online 30 sec EBEX
- 9001
Will the more affluent individuals and businesses go out and install generators, because the trustworthiness of the electrical grid is further deteriorating? Will the less fortunate, who don’t have such resources, suffer outages disproportionately?
Politicians talk about three abilities: reliability, affordability and sustainability. But when the lights go out, affordability rapidly goes out the window. Those who can pay, will pay, and they’ll pay whatever they need to in order to keep the lights on. And running expensive, small scale, less efficient and more polluting generators proves that few people care about sustainability, and even less about greenhouse gasses, when the option is power or no power.
Over the last year Danielle Smith’s government has taken more action to correct this path than anyone else in a long time. But the huge amounts of renewables already on track to be added to the grid will further exacerbate the issue with their unreliable power, magnifying any other glitch in the system, such as happened on April 5 with the Keephills 2 unit.
In Saskatchewan, we are also adding a lot more renewable wind and solar – a further 3,000 megawatts by 2035. We, too, risk grid alerts as we inevitably become more reliant on that which is utterly unreliable. It’s great when it works, and awful when it doesn’t, which, again, is precisely what happened on April 5 in Alberta.
The electrical grid in Alberta, for all of its glorious energy transition, keeps sliding from bad to worse the deeper we get into the much-desired transition.
If this is the energy transition the federal government wants to force on all of Canada, they can shove it. Keep my lights on.
Brian Zinchuk is editor and owner of Pipeline Online and occasional contributor to the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. He can be reached at brian.zinchuk@pipelineonline.ca.
- 0084 EMP Metals Pipeline Online0084 EMP Metals Pipeline Online
- 0053 Kingston Midstream Westspur Alameda Click0053 Kingston Midstream Westspur Alameda Click
- 0082 CsHM 2024 Pipeline0082 CsHM 2024 Pipeline
- 0077 Caprice Resources Stand Up For Free Speech0077 Caprice Resources Stand Up For Free Speech
- 0076 Latus only0076 Latus only
- 0061 SIMSA 2024 For Sask Buy Sask0061 SIMSA 2024 For Sask Buy Sask
- 0055 Smart Power Be Smart with your Power office0055 Smart Power Be Smart with your Power office
- 0051 JML Hiring Pumpjack assembly0051 JML Hiring Pumpjack assembly
- 0049 Scotsburn Dental soft guitar0049 Scotsburn Dental soft guitar
- 0046 City of Estevan This is Estevan0046 City of Estevan This is Estevan
- 0041 DEEP Since 2018 now we are going to build0041 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 services0002 gilliss casing services
- 9002 Pipeline Online 30 sec EBEX9002 Pipeline Online 30 sec EBEX
- 9001