Brian Zinchuk is editor and owner of Pipeline Online
Alberta wind turbines. Photo by Clive Schaupmeyer
UPDATED: For the third day in a row, Alberta’s 4,748 megawatts of nameplate wind capacity was producing effectively nothing, or actually nothing.
At 10:00 a.m. on Sunday, July 21, wind power output fell to zero megawatts. The day before, on Saturday, July 20, just one megawatt was being being sent to grid from 1,568 wind turbines.
That’s according to data from the Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO).
This graphic from the Alberta Electric System Operatorshows the actual wind output for the past two days and forecast for the next seven. At 10 a.m. it recorded zero megawatts from all of Alberta’s 46 wind farms.
One megawatt is 0.02 per cent, or two ten-thousandths of capacity. And zero, of course, is zero.
As the heat wave continued to roast western Canada, almost exactly the same thing happened the day before, at around the same time. Wind power in Alberta yet again flatlined around noon. it hit one megawatt at 10:38 a.m. on July 19.
In addition to those three days of scraping bottom over the weekend, a few days earlier, wind output in Alberta actually hit zero output at 11:38 a.m. on Tuesday, July 16. At that moment, the entire wind fleet, costing billions of dollars, couldn’t power a lightbulb.
So that’s four days out six that saw wind generation fall to either zero or one megawatts.
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The weekend low wind events were bailed out by strong performance from solar generation. On Sunday, solar was putting out 1,222 megawatts out of 1,650 nameplate capacity. On Saturday, that number was 1,307. Many solar facilities were running at maximum capacity.
Three of Alberta’s ten grid-scale batteries were being held in the dispatched contingency reserve for ready application, but none were providing power to the grid. The same happened on Saturday and Friday.
And during these events, Alberta’s grid was pulling in relatively low amounts of power from its neighbours through interconnects. While demand was relatively high, there was ample natural gas online to power the grid. On Sunday, natural gas was providing 9,053 megawatts out of the 10,798 being produced to the grid. That’s 83 per cent of power generation. The previous evening, natural gas accounted for more than 90 per cent of Alberta’s power.
The natural gas fleet saw all the big units producing, and there were several smaller simple cycle units available for peaking generation.
That’s significant, as the proposed Clean Electricity Regulations would have all coal and natural gas units in the country shut down by 2035 unless they implement carbon capture units. Without carbon capture, they would only be allowed to operate for 450 hours per year (about five per cent annual capacity) in peaking operations. As Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has noted, that wouldn’t get the province through Jan. 19, if you started counting those hours on Jan. 1.
Editor’s note: While Pipeline Online has up until now largely been ignored by Facebook’s ban on Canadian media, this past weekend saw three posts removed by Facebook for “violating community standards.” One of those was a story with a YouTube link of a podcast between Dr. Jordan Peterson and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith. Another was a similar YouTube link to Quick Dick McDick taking his truck to Ag in Motion. Apparently these are violations of “community standards.”
This happened after this piece went viral on Facebook, talking about the failure of Alberta wind.
You can follow Pipeline Online on LinkedIn here and here, and on X here. You can also sign up for a weekly newsletter here. And of course, Pipeline Online posts its top story at 7 a.m. each day at PipelineOnline.ca.
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- 0053 Kingston Midstream Westspur Alameda Click0053 Kingston Midstream Westspur Alameda Click
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- 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
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- 0032 IWS Summer hiring rock trailer music
- 0022 Grimes winter hiring
- 0021 OSY Rentals S8 Promo
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- 0002 gilliss casing services0002 gilliss casing services
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