Brian Zinchuk is editor and owner of Pipeline Online
Poplar River Power Station, Coronach, Saskatchewan. File Photo by Brian Zinchuk
CORONACH, ESTEVAN, REGINA – Heavy rains in the Coronach area Friday night have resulted in the shutdown of the coal-fired Poplar River Power Station, just when high temperatures are putting pressure on SaskPower’s grid to keep everyone’s air conditioning running. The result is a 582 megawatt coal-fired power station went offline, and SaskPower is scrambling to meet demand. One of the things it is doing is internal “load shedding,” reducing power consumption where it can, so that other customers have the power they need.
The problem became acute late Friday night, June 2, according to SaskPower.
SaskPower spokesperson Joel Cherry told Pipeline Online the morning of June 6, “Yes, Poplar River is down and what happened there is, it’s not a planned outage. Because of heavy rains in the last few days, there was, as I understand, a dike on some farmers property nearby that breached and a whole bunch of debris kind of spilled down the creek into our reservoir at Poplar River. So, the wells there are all full of mud and hay and that sort of thing. So we can’t get the water we need to run the plant.
“We’re working to get it fixed. It’s going to take a little while and we are down, like you said, close to 600 megawatts in the meantime. And loads are going up, because it’s warm. So it’s tight, like we are seeing some constraints. But you know, we’re doing everything we can to make sure we still have a supply of power.”
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No danger of blackouts
Asked if Saskatchewan had been in danger of rolling blackouts on Monday, he said, “We were not in danger of rotating outages on Monday. Capacity may be tight at times this week, but our forecasts suggest we will be able to meet demand.”
On that day, peak load for SaskPower was 3,428 megawatts. That is similar to a cold day this past winter, and this occurred with one of the largest power stations out of commission.
The highest load SaskPower has ever seen was 3,910 megawatts on Dec. 30, 2021.
As for how much Saskatchewan’s 617 megawatts of installed wind power and 30 megawatts of solar power contributed on Monday, Cherry said, “Monday’s average wind production was 200 megawatts. Peak wind power was 350 megawatts and the low output was 10 MW. Peak solar output was 22 megawatts. Looking forward, wind power is expected to be lower for much of the week because of low wind speeds, while solar is expected to be high because of forecast sunny conditions.”
That’s a range of 1.6 per cent to 56.7 per cent of Saskatchewan’s wind capacity output.
Two draglines south of Bienfait. File photo by Brian Zinchuk
Draglines shut down to shed load
Pipeline Online learned that on Monday the draglines used to mine coal at Estevan and Coronach will be shut down from 2 to 8 p.m. this week. As electrically-powered draglines are high power consumers, each consuming several megawatts while in operation, that will offer a slight reprieve during times of peak air conditioner demand. And as the draglines are typically several weeks ahead of the actual coal consumption, if they shut down for six hours each day, in four days, only one full day of production has been lost. Cherry said, “SaskPower has coordinated with Westmoreland in the past to manage peak loads. The amount of peak shedding is dependent on the mine’s operational plans at the time, one could expect 5 to 15 megawatts each for Estevan and Poplar River.”
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However, as of Tuesday afternoon, other industrial customers have not been affected by load shedding. Cherry said, “No customers have been asked to shed load at this time.”
Asked how common is load shedding for SaskPower, and does this happen regularly, or just during events like that storm that shut down Boundary Dam Power Station a few years ago, Cherry replied, “Residential load shedding in Saskatchewan has not occurred, but we do have demand response customers that SaskPower has used in tight capacity situations previously.”
Asked if they’ve asked any of their industrial customers beyond the minds to shed load, Cherry said, “We’ve been delaying and deferring any of our own work that might impact generation. And, you know, if needed, we could do something like reduce some of the load from CCS (carbon capture and storage). But we haven’t had to do that, yet. It really comes down to how things are looking at peak times, what the winds are like and that sort of thing. There are industrial customers that there could be curtailments, but we haven’t had to do that either.”
This is either BD4 or BD5, several years ago undergoing maintenance. File photo by Brian Zinchuk
Boundary Dam Unit 4 called back into service, again
The 139 megawatt Boundary Dam Unit 4, which was supposed to retire Dec. 31, 2021, but has been retained by SaskPower for times of high demand. It was fired up to add more power to the grid. Cherry said, “BD4 has been brought online to help meet the system during the heatwave with Poplar River offline.”
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Interconnects key when trouble occurs
A key consideration for power utilities are its interconnects with neighbouring utilities, allowing each utility to buy or sell power as needed. These interconnects become crucial at times when critical infrastructure goes down, such as this case. Asked about this, Cherry said, “Imports from Manitoba and exports to Alberta are optimized on an hourly basis considering available transmission, energy position both in province and with our neighboring jurisdictions and market prices. We are unable to provide more specific information for reasons of commercial sensitivity.
However, he did add, “Regarding imports, we are importing the maximum from Manitoba at the moment, about 350 megawatts.”
It is very rare for Alberta to be exporting power to Saskatchewan. SaskPower typically exports 150 megawatts of power to Alberta on most days, although in the spring time it is sometimes a third of that.
Starting at 2:25 p.m. on Sunday, June 4 until the evening of Monday, June 5, most hours Alberta was exporting between 18 and 89 megawatts to Saskatchewan. Most of that time it was around 88 megawatts.
At 8:25 a.m., on Tuesday when Saskatchewan demand was low, Saskatchewan was still exporting 41 megawatts to Alberta. At 10:30 a.m., the Alberta Electric System Operator was showing zero power being imported from Saskatchewan. By 9:25 p.m on Tuesday, SaskPower was again exporting 91 megawatts to Alberta.
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What about wind?
As mentioned above, wind power generation is often highly variable.
Assiniboia’s Golden South Wind Facility is the largest in Saskatchewan, with a nameplate capacity of 200 megawatts. But at 10:30 a.m., on Tuesday, there was only 9 kilometres per hour of wind, not enough to produce much, if any, power. At Herbert’s 175 megawatt Blue Hill Wind Facility, the wind was better. Nearby Swift Current showed wind at 18 kilometres per hour, gusting to 33.
(Coincidentally, for several early morning hours of June 4, Alberta saw its wind power production hover around 60 megawatts, or 1.6 per cent of nameplate capacity)
And for much of June 6, Environment Canada had heat warnings issued for the eastern half of Saskatchewan. Those heat warnings were still posted as of last Tuesday night.
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