Brian Zinchuk is editor and owner of Pipeline Online
Alberta wind turbines. Photo by Clive Schaupmeyer
One Alberta coal plant put out 135x what the whole wind fleet did. Not 1.35x, or 13.5x, but 135x
Making lunch in Alberta at noon on Thursday, April 13 meant almost certainly your frying pan wasn’t powered by wind.
A day after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was in Winnipeg talking about “clean energy,” Alberta’s wind fleet saw its generation totally collapse.
Indeed, wind power production fell as low as 6 megawatts in total at 10:25 a.m. That’s 0.16 per cent, or 16 ten-thousandths, of the nameplate capacity of 3,618 megawatts. And by just before noon, it wasn’t much better, with only 10 megawatts output.
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And at 10:25 a.m., the last remaining coal plant in Alberta, with two generators working exclusively on coal was producing 135 times the amount of power of the entire fleet of 36 wind farms composed of hundreds of turbines and costing billions of dollars. This year, Capital Power intends on converting those last remaining coal units to natural gas, adding 210 megawatts of battery storage, converting Unit 3 to full natural gas, and be fully out of coal. That will mean the entire Alberta grid will be out of coal at that point. Carbon capture is also in development for the facility.
However, as solar power was producing 895 megawatts at the time, and demand was down significantly compared to winter due to warmer weather, the provincial pool price for electricity had fallen to $54.81 per megawatt hour. Four hours earlier, when the sun wasn’t up, but wind was very low, that price spiked to nearly $700 per megawatt hour.
At this moment 86% of Alberta's electricity is being produced by fossil fuels. Wind is at 0.2% of capacity and producing 0.1% of total generation, while solar is at 76.8% of capacity and producing 9.62% of total generation. At the same time we are importing 566 MW or 6% pic.twitter.com/MzxNN1v3pU
— Reliable AB Energy (@ReliableAB) April 13, 2023
The middle of the night saw output fall to 60 megawatts. The low appears to be at 10:25 a.m. And by 11:10 to 11:44, wind’s output floated between 10 and 13 megawatts. Only five of the 36 wind farms were producing any power whatsoever, with 31 zeros in the production column. Of the larger facilities capable of producing over 100 megawatts a piece, 13 were producing zeros.
Alberta wind power generation at 11:44 a.m., Thursday, April 13. Around that time, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was referencing “clean energy” while in Regina. MC is maximum capacity in megawatts, TNG is Total Net to Grid, in megawatts, DCR is Dispatched and accepted Contingency Reserve. Alberta Electric System Operator
Saskatchewan is on this path. SaskPower is intent on adding an additional 3,000 megawatts of wind and solar power production in this province by 2035. This will generally be done through independent power producers, with a power purchase agreement.
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