Windless Wednesday in Alberta as output falls to 0.1 per cent, while Nova Scotia pitches powering a quarter of the country with wind

Jun 5, 2025

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Wind turbines near Drumheller on Aug. 7, 2024. Photo by Katrina Zinchuk

 

In the same week Nova Scotia is proposing building enough wind power generation to handle 27 per cent of Canada’s electricity needs, Alberta saw next to now power come from its fleet of 45 wind farms throughout most of Wednesday, June 4.

It was a windless Wednesday in Alberta, according to data from the Alberta Electric System Operator, as logged by X account @ReliableAB. That log saw wind output start to collapse in the morning, dropping to just 20 megawatts by 8:59 a.m., out of a total nameplate grid-scale capacity 5,688 megawatts. An hour later, output fell to just 7 megawatts, or 0.1 per cent of total capacity, one one-thousandth of capacity.

Here’s that data from @ReliableAB:

 

Time Wind Output % Wind Capacity
4:59 645 11.3
7:00 224 3.9
8:59 20 0.4
9:59 7 0.1
10:59 24 0.4
12:59 60 1.1
14:49 37 0.7
16:59 65 1.1
18:59 9 0.2
20:59 149 2.6
22:59 680 12

And it stayed in the 1 per cent range, or less, all the way into the evening. At 6:59 p.m., wind output was down to 9 megawatts. Only as the sun was going down did it start to rise.

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So what does all that look like graphically?

Here’s some handy Excel graphs to spell it out.

Here’s what that looks like as a percentage of nameplate capacity.

But that previous graph is deceiving. Here’s what it really looked like. The top bar is the nameplate capacity of the 45 wind farms with more than 1700 wind turbines across Alberta. The vertical bars are the actual output at those times.

And here’s what that looks like against capacity, percentage-wise. Blue is the nameplate capacity, orange is how much was actually produced.

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Alberta did not fall short of power as demand at this time of year is notably lower than the hottest or coldest days of the year, and last year 900 megawatts of additional natural gas-fired capacity was added to the grid.

There was an interesting discussion on LinkedIn by professional engineer Jason Doering, who spends a lot of time doing deep dives into the Alberta grid. He looked into Saturday, May 31, and discussed a noted spike in the grid’s frequency linked to issues with the province’s interties to British Columbia and Montana. You can read about that here.

FILE – A Block Island Wind Farm turbine operates, Dec. 7, 2023, off the coast of Block Island, R.I., during a tour organized by Orsted. This is what offshore wind off Nova Scotia could look like. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson, File)

 

Nova Scotia’s massive wind pitch

And what does all this have to do with Nova Scotia?

Prime Minister Mark Carney had asked each premier to come to the Saskatoon First Ministers Meeting with five nation-building projects for discussion.

On Monday, June 2, Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston made his pitch via social media for that province to become its own energy superpower by massively building out offshore wind power generation. In a video posted on various social media, he pointed out that the province’s current grid demand is around 2,400 megawatts, or 2.4 gigawatts. He proclaimed there’s a capacity to build that out to 66 gigawatts, or 27.5 times what the current needs of Nova Scotia, and export that power to points west. In a play on the whole “Energy East” pipeline project, which is defunct but Houston said he supports, this wind idea is called “Wind West.”

As part of a national energy corridor which would bring western Canadian oil to the East Coast, he wants to build power lines along that same corridor transporting Nova Scotia wind power, which he described as “reliable.”

(Notably, to assemble a wind turbine, you need calm conditions, which, in and of itself, means there are days at that precise location the wind doesn’t blow, or those turbines could never be assembled.)

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At no point does the Nova Scotia premier provide a cost estimate. But put in perspective, 66 gigawatts is 9.6 times the size of Alberta’s already massive wind turbine buildout, which had taken decades to accomplish, although half of that has occurred in the last five years.

Houston’s post said, “Nova Scotia proudly supports the Eastern Energy Partnership, an ambitious move to get our natural resources to market and drive regional economic growth. Our contribution, Wind West, is a bold step forward in clean energy that would create jobs, attract investment, and strengthen our economy with a new transmission cable that would get our energy to market. Wind West puts Nova Scotia at the heart of Atlantic Canada’s energy future. Let’s make it happen.”

 

Here’s the text of Houston’s announcement:

What if Nova Scotia could power up to 27 per cent of Canada’s electricity? Stop and think about that. That would make Nova Scotia an energy superpower.

Sounds like a stretch, right? Well, it’s not.

Right now, Nova Scotia is on the edge of the clean energy breakthrough, and we’re already in the process of licensing five gigawatts of offshore wind energy. For context, our entire province only uses about 2.4 gigawatts at peak demand. This five gigawatts, in and of itself, is massive. It’s twice what we use today.

But the real story: our offshore wind zones could generate up to 66 gigawatts, not two, not four, not five, 66, and with steady winds that blow about 60 per cent of the time, Nova Scotia can produce a reliable 40 gigawatts.

So here’s the next question: why produce that reliable 40 gigawatts, when do you only need two, unless you can export the rest?

Well, you can’t export clean power without a way to move it. We need a cable, ideally, along a national energy corridor to deliver that wind energy westward across Canada.

We call it Wind West and Nova Scotia’s Wind West project can produce enough energy that is the equivalent of powering up to 27 per cent of the country’s needs.

This energy is very valuable. New England has massive extra energy needs. They’re certainly not alone.

I support the Prime Minister’s vision of making Canada an energy superpower. That’s why I fully support projects like Energy East that are important for the West and our entire country. But Nova Scotia has a lot to contribute to making Canada an energy superpower.

Canada would be even stronger with Energy East and Wind West, we’ve been hitting a golden ticket with global uncertainty rising with growing pressure for us to do our part with Nova Scotia rank 60th out of 60 GDP per capita in North America, we cannot afford to let this moment pass us by.

Of course, there are questions. Big projects always raise questions, but we are committed to working with Nova Scotians to ensure this project will benefit everyone.

Industry is desperate for clean, reliable energy. Wind West could fuel battery plants, AI data centers, industries of the future, and it would transform our economy here in Nova Scotia. For our workers, for our families, it would be a game-changer. My government is ready to invest. Private capital is ready to invest, but it will take the political will of the federal government to step up with funding, too. We’re at the table, with our sleeves rolled up, ready to paint a new, self reliant, prosperous picture the future of Nova Scotia and Canada.

And so, what are we waiting for? Let’s make it happen, right now.

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