Wind goes from 90.5% output in Saskatchewan last week to 0.05% in Alberta on Monday

Brian Zinchuk

Brian Zinchuk is editor and owner of Pipeline Online

Those “kettle lakes” are believed to have been left by the retreating Laurentide Ice Sheet, about 15,000 years ago near Kipling. What caused that ice to melt? Photo by Brian Zinchuk

Last week, Saskatchewan had a remarkable string of days with wind power output hitting likely its highest numbers to date. And this Monday, Feb. 3, wind power generation in Alberta flatlined to 0.05 per cent output.

Such are the vagaries of weather-dependent wind power generation.

Starting with Saskatchewan last week: On January 21 Saskatchewan saw the start of eight consecutive days of high wind output – the highest yet observed by Pipeline Online or SaskPower, according to SaskPower, on the basis of output in megawatts. But it was also remarkable for percentage of capacity, too.

For those eight days, ending Jan. 28, the average 24-hour wind output varied from 65.5 to 90.5 per cent. Five days in a row, the output averaged between 87.8 per cent and 90.5 per cent. These are remarkable numbers that are very rarely seen for Saskatchewan wind output.

Here’s the numbers, as recorded by X account @SkElectricity, using daily data provided by SaskPower’s Where your Power Comes From webpage. All numbers are in megawatts

And here’s the percentages. Jan. 29 is included to show a more typical day in winter.

Also note these were average outputs, meaning that throughout these days power exceeded those percentages at times, as well as fell below them. On Jan. 26, the 90.5 per cent output averaging 739 out of 817 megawatts, meaning that for all intents and purposes, wind capacity was flat out much of the day.

And since the addition of the 200 megawatt Bekevar Wind Facility near Kipling, it means when numbers do get this high, total wind output can and did exceed the output of the coal-fired Poplar River Power Station.

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Alberta flatline

But then the converse of the wind equation was revealed just a few days later in Alberta. On Monday, Feb. 3, wind output from the 5,688 megawatts of installed capacity fell to 19 megawatts at 9:13 a.m., and hovered around 22 megawatts for the better part of an hour. The 19 megawatts equals 0.3 per cent, or one-third of one per cent of nameplate capacity.

But by 12:30 p.m., it fell to 3 megawatts out of 5,688 megawatts. That’s 0.05 per cent, or five ten-thousandths of capacity. And it stayed at close to that level for several minutes.

Circled in red was the output of Alberta’s more than 1700 wind turbines at 12:30 on Monday, Feb. 3. MC is maximum capacity in megawatts, TNG is total net to grid, and DCR is dispatched and accepted contingency reserve. AESO

(Editor’s note: This story had to be revised numerous times as wind output fell from 12 to 10, 8, 7, 6, 5 then 4 and finally 3 megawatts. And the calculator had to go into scientific notation to actually display the ratio for 3/5688 megawatts. The answer was 5.274261603375527e-4)

At that moment, only two of Alberta’s 50 wind farms, Lafine Wind, and Wintering Hills, were generating any power whatsoever. The remaining 48 wind farms were producing zeros. Alberta has more than 1700 wind turbines in its grid-scale wind power generation fleet.

And while it was cold, with temperatures around -25 C in much of the wind farm belt, that temperature is still a few degrees above the -30 C threshold where most wind turbines shut down before they are subject to cold brittle behaviour, risking catastrophic consequences. According to Windy.com, there was simply very little wind, in the 3 knot range, throughout the wind belt.

At 12:22, when the sun is highest in the sky, Alberta’s fleet of 1,812 megawatts of grid-scale solar was producing 441 megawatts, or 24.3 per cent capacity.

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Big differences

Saskatchewan’s remarkable week of wind output is also in sharp contrast to what happened at around the same time last year. That’s when the first week of January, 2024 saw wind power production totally flatline in Saskatchewan for at least part of each of seven days in a row, from Jan. 2 to Jan. 8, 2024, inclusive.

At the time, Pipeline Online reported:

On Jan. 2, SaskPower saw zero wind power for 0.6 hours, with wind less than 10 megawatts for seven hours, including that 0.6 hours with no wind at all.

On Jan. 3, there was zero wind power for 0.6 hours and less than 10 megawatts for 4.7 hours (including the zero power 0.6 hours). Wind averaged 97 megawatts over 24 hours (15.7 per cent capacity).

Then on Jan. 4, a whole 2.2 hours saw zero wind power. A total of 2.6 hours had less than 10 megawatts (including the 2.2 hours of zero power). Wind averaged 85 megawatts over 24 hours (13.8 per cent capacity).

Jan. 5 saw 2.0 hours with zero wind and a total 7.1 hours with less than 10 megawatts (inclusive of the 2.0 hours of zero wind). Wind averaged 73 megawatts over the day (11.8 per cent capacity).

Jan. 6 had 0.3 hours with no wind, and a total of 3.1 hours of less than 10 megawatts (inclusive of 0.3 hours of zero wind).

On 7 numbers, on Jan. 7, there was no wind for 0.1 hours and 3.4 hours with wind at less than 10 megawatts. SaskPower’s Where Your Power Comes From web page indicated wind on that day averaged 27 megawatts for the 24-hour period, lower than all the other days listed above. It’s also 4.3 per cent of capacity.

And on Jan. 8, there were 1.4 hours with no wind and approximately 7.7 hours with less than 10 megawatts of wind generation (inclusive).

UPDATE: at 7:33 p.m. on Monday, Feb. 3, wind again fell to less than 1 per cent output in Alberta. It was 26 megawatts, or 0.5 per cent capacity, again. This occurred as the temperature dipped to -32 C in Edmonton. The AESO did not need to declare a grid alert, due to the addition of 900 megawatts of natural gas-fired combined cycle power generation at Cascade Power Project, Its two units were churning out 411 and 451 megawatts, respectively. That extra 861 megawatts of baseload, dispatchable appears to have made all the difference as power demand over the supper hour was just a few hundred megawatts under the all time record.

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