On the day that SaskPower announced the addition of the new 200 megawatt Bekevar Wind Energy Facility to the grid, output at that wind farm totally died. It happened not just at Bekevar, but across the southern prairies.
That evening, Alberta’s 48 wind farms totaling a theoretical maximum output of 5,340 megawatt produced between 0 and five megawatts for at least three hours, from 8:44 p.m. until midnight. For most, if not all, of that first hour, wind output in Alberta was a big fat zero, just as it was at Bekevar in the late afternoon.