Brian Zinchuk is editor and owner of Pipeline Online
Wind turbines near Pincher Creek. Photo by Clive Schaupmeyer.
Alberta sees minimal to next to no wind output for the better part of a day, and counting
Alberta’s fleet of 1,760 wind turbines hardly put out any power since mid-afternoon on Friday leading into at least late-morning on Saturday. And one, again, is the loneliest number when that’s the total amount of megawatts produced from the fleet of 1,760 turbines.
That’s according to Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO) data compiled by X account @ReliableAB.
Pipeline Online receives email alerts from @ReliableAB whenever certain thresholds are met. One is when total wind output in Alberta falls below one per cent capacity, and another is when it falls below 10 megawatts output from a total nameplate capacity of 5,684 megawatts. A second email is sent when that condition no longer exists.
The email inbox has been flooded with notices for both conditions since Friday evening.
You can check out the hourly blog here. The X account is here.
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Here’s a grid showing output over that time period. For the morning and early afternoon of Friday, Aug. 14, wind output was low, generally less than five per cent output, in the 200s to 300s of megawatts. But then at 2:59 p.m. it fell to 1.7 per cent (96 megawatts) output and has remained below that since then until the time of writing, 11:00 a.m. on Saturday, Aug. 15.
| Time (MDT) | Output in Megawatts | % of nameplate |
| 13:59:00 | 154 | 2.70 |
| 14:59:00 | 96 | 1.70 |
| 15:59:00 | 74 | 1.30 |
| 16:59:00 | 54 | 1.00 |
| 17:59:00 | 47 | 0.80 |
| 18:59:00 | 79 | 1.40 |
| 19:59:00 | 60 | 1.10 |
| 20:59:00 | 36 | 0.60 |
| 21:59:00 | 54 | 1.00 |
| 22:59:00 | 58 | 1.00 |
| 23:59:00 | 89 | 1.60 |
| 00:59:00 | 29 | 0.50 |
| 01:59:00 | 25 | 0.04 |
| 02:59:00 | 15 | 0.30 |
| 03:59:00 | 1 | 0.02 |
| 04:59:00 | 5 | 0.10 |
| 05:59:00 | 10 | 0.20 |
| 06:59:00 | 34 | 0.60 |
| 07:59:00 | 35 | 0.60 |
| 08:59:00 | 16 | 0.30 |
| 09:59:00 | 36 | 0.60 |
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Several things stand out. At 3:59 a.m., wind output was recorded at 1 megawatt out of a nameplate capacity of 5,684.
Throughout the night, natural gas generated some of the highest numbers, percentage-wise, Pipeline Online has observed in nearly five years of monitoring the Alberta grid. For several hours natural gas accounted for 94 per cent of total power generation. At 4:59 a.m. it hit 95.4 per cent of total power generation. This occurred as wind was at five megawatts and solar was at zero output since it was the end of the night, just before dawn.
There was no danger of the power going out at this time, as demand was low due to cooler temperatures that required neither air conditioning nor much heating. And as much of this happened late in the night/early morning of a weekend, offices, schools and factories were idle. Indeed, despite the low wind conditions and zero solar output, Alberta was still able to export a net 52 megawatts. (Exporting 56 megawatts to BC and 47 megawatts to Montana while importing 51 megawatts from Saskatchewan, all at a moderate price of $21.33 per megawatt-hour).
For reference, SaskPower’s data from Thursday, Aug. 13 (delayed two days for market competitiveness) showed wind output averaging 96 megawatts out of a nameplate capacity of 817 megawatts, averaged over 24 hours. On that day, natural gas accounted for 48 per cent of power generated (1,446 megawatts), while coal was 31 per cent of power (932 megawatts) over the 24 hour average. Wind was three per cent, while hydro was 18 per cent (533 megawatts). Solar was five megawatts (negligible percentage) and “other” was -1 megawatt. Exports accounted for 178 megawatts on average over 24 hours. Total demand was 2,832 megawatts, which is pretty close to the low side for demand throughout the year.
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