Essay by Eric Worrall
h/t cedarsand: “… at this time of year, we don’t have any solar power … Over the last couple of days, the wind has dropped off dramatically. …”
How did Alberta wind up facing blackouts in the extreme cold? A Q and A with AESO
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Author of the article:
Jonny Wakefield
Published Jan 14, 2024We hit the demand peak on Thursday and it looked like we were going to be fine, there was no indication that we were going to be in a situation where we might have to shed load like we did last night. Suddenly 48 hours later, there’s warnings of potential brownouts and blackouts. I’m wondering how we got from a fairly stable situation on Thursday to what we experienced last night and might experience again this evening?
With the extreme cold, we are seeing very, very high demand. We set an all-time record Thursday night, 12,384 megawatts. The key difference — and there’s never one single factor that puts us into a grid alert — it’s the extreme cold, we’ve had reduced imports and very little wind. And of course, when we get into the peak period from 4-7 p.m., at this time of year, we don’t have any solar power. So on Thursday, we were in a bit better situation, because we had strong wind, we had 1,200 megawatts approximately throughout the peak period from four to seven. So that really made a difference. Over the last couple of days, the wind has dropped off dramatically. We’ve also had a couple of natural gas plants, one is offline, and one is operating at reduced capacity.
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Read more: https://edmontonjournal.com/news/local-news/how-did-alberta-wind-up-facing-blackouts-in-the-cold
State politicians were quick to point the main weak link was renewable energy.
Premiers pan green-energy plans as cold weather strains Alberta’s electricity grid
Rob Drinkwater
Published Jan. 15, 2024 3:47 p.m. AESTEDMONTON –
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“Right now, wind is generating almost no power. When renewables are unreliable, as they are now, natural gas plants must increase capacity to keep Albertans safe,” Alberta Premier Danielle Smith posted on social media Friday, shortly after the province’s grid operator issued an appeal for consumers to conserve electricity to protect the system.
A day later, following a second grid alert that warned of potential rotating blackouts, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe posted that surplus power it was sending Alberta’s way was coming from natural gas and coal-fired power plants.
“The ones the Trudeau government is telling us to shut down (which we won’t),” Moe said on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
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Read more: https://edmonton.ctvnews.ca/premiers-pan-green-energy-plans-as-cold-weather-strains-alberta-s-electricity-grid-1.6725876
Wake up Canada. No amount of renewable capacity can save you, when wind and solar both fail at the same time. The only reason the Alberta grid clung to life during the wind fail is coal and gas power, from Alberta and Saskatchewan – power plants which the Federal Government is pressuring Saskatchewan to close.
Those who continue to support Prime Minister Trudeau’s reckless crusade against reliable energy, the blood of your friends and neighbours will be on your hands.
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Canada has to improve its risk analyses, and add reserves where necessary.
The PJM grid management company used to assure generation reserves were ready and able to pick up load to prevent system shortfalls, preventing system-wide blackouts. Reserves prevent massive disruptions that threaten life and property.
Of course, since wind/solar generation can’t be predicted and scheduled, they are not available in bad weather or react to equipment failures. Without predictable output they can’t be used in risk analyses as other than “non-available.”
PJM forecasting and risk analysis takes in all the historical loads, economic growth (or loss), and extreme weather or other events that can interrupt generation or transmission lines and substations. Load flow analyses with risks of multiple line or equipment or generation failures must be continuously performed. The grid is a living machine and faces system threats daily.
In Pennsylvania, we’ve had -20F for two weeks that stopped even coal from underground from adjacent generating stations, trucker strikes that stopped coal deliveries, miners strikes, electrical workers strikes, and of course heavy, leaf clinging snow or freezing rain bringing down distribution lines. All somewhat predicable with advance warning and since reserves were planned and availalbe, system-wide failures were avoided.
The US has been warned over and over about possible blackouts. Yet, the one controllable cause in not eliminated.
Our electric systems ( and pipelines) have too many sporadic ,intermittent, unreliable generators installed without the needed capacity ready to dispatch.
The US is also unacceptably close to a disaster of our own making.
‘The US is also unacceptably close to a disaster of our own making.’
Well, I’m certain that I haven’t voted for any of this nonsense, but that will provide only a modicum of comfort when the lights go out.
There is a place for Justin in the anus of history. Damn that spell check!
😀😀😀
Sometimes – often, actually – I wish it were only the stupid that were affected by their stupid decisions, and not the rest of us too. They deserve it – I do not!
I’m all for natural selection taking place. But the ones who suffer the consequences need to be those doing stupid things, not the rational among us…
The rational among us realize that, but we are not yet ‘in control’.
https://medium.com/@leibowitt/of-course-fidel-castro-is-justin-trudeaus-dad-nobody-has-debunked-anything-4db6fc8a9042
For the many who see the resemblance.
Proof positive that the government has no business in the energy production business. Government is not the solution, government is the problem. Remove government from energy production and the problem goes away. This is not rocket science we are seeing it right here and now.
Before 1900 when aspirin was invented everyone used opium and opiates where they were available without problems.
Even in the 1920s and 1930s when opiates were still available and legal only an average of 35 people per year died from them compared to about 3,100 deaths from alcohol at the time.
The government didn’t want Chinese immigrants getting rich so they made it illegal.
That greatly increased the price and caused people who needed it to feel normal, because their bodies didn’t make enough endorphins, to have to use syringes because it was so expensive, resulting in around 100,000 deaths per year in the US alone..
I was one of those who received the emergency message on Saturday evening. Here is the text:
Source: Alberta Emergency Management Agency
Issued: Jan 13, 2024 at 06:44 PM
History:
Description: This is an Alberta Emergency Alert issued by the Alberta Emergency Management Agency.
Extreme cold resulting in high power demand has placed the Alberta grid at a high risk of rotating power outages this evening.
Affected areas (1):
Action to take:
We were later informed via news feed that the reason for the emergency was a 200 MW sudden increase in demand. A few minutes after the alert was sent, consumption dropped 100 MW.
I have a speculation and would like others, if they can, to confirm its possibility.
The claim is that there was a sudden increase in demand of 200 MW. This is odd. No one has a 200 MW electric heater. If seems far more likely that there was a sudden 200 MW shortfall in supply. That, my friends, points to our old friend, wind turbines.
The temperature was very low all day (local maximum was -34.4 C) and further south is tends to be a bit warmer in winter, around Calgary for instance. The wind turbines are spread around but the South is a windier place most of the time.
At our place, Lac Ste Anne County, it dropped to -43 C over Saturday night. When the temperature outside reaches -30 C, the turbines have to shut down. It is too cold to operate. That is what I read, please confirm.
Second, not well known, is that large turbine nacelles cannot be allowed to drop to an ambient -30 C, they have to be kept warm using electric heaters, particularly the gearbox which is their Achilles heel. There is a second power draw which is that large turbines cannot be allowed to stand still for a long time. The front end is so heavy it bends the main shaft creating a permanent bend after x-hours, however long that is. So they have an electric motor that turns it slowly, either continuously or episodically. You many have witnessed this turning at low speed on a windless day.
My thesis is that things were fine (and barely coping) when a number of wind turbines cut out almost simultaneously because the temperature fellow below -30 (or some other number, if that one is incorrect). This dropped the supply by 200 MW while simultaneously requiring power from the grid to keep them warm and (probably) turn them a few degrees occasionally.
The reason this didn’t happen on Thursday is because there was enough wind in places warm enough to avoid triggering an automatic shutdown tipping the system over the edge.
Is this all plausible?
Maybe. If you see an analysis which points the finger at wind turbines this way, please send us a story tip.
https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2024/01/14/most-of-albertas-wind-fleet-shut-down-by-cold-thursday-night/
“That was clearly indicated by Blackspring Ridge, which all by itself was providing roughly half of the roughly 400 megawatts of wind power in Alberta at the time [approximately 11 pm]. Located near Lethbridge, it was producing roughly two-thirds of its nameplate capacity, despite wind speeds of 7 knots and gusts up to 16 knots at Lethbridge, while the temperature was −28 C. Stirling Wind, on the other side of Lethbridge, was producing 47 megawatts just a few hours earlier, before dropping to 2 megawatts at 9 p.m.
In the hour that followed, Blackspring Ridge, too, appeared to be spinning down in a linear fashion, producing 79 megawatts at 12:15 a.m. And at 7:28 a.m., it was at one megawatt.”
So Blackspring Ridge went from producing roughly 200 megawatts to 79 Mw from about 11 pm to 12:15 am.
All this happened AFTER the alert was issued, though. They may have gotten a heads-up that wind turbines would be spinning down, or Alberta saw a 200 Mw increase in demand followed within hours by a 400Mw reduction in wind power production.
Regardless, they had a royal mess to contend with, and renewables completely failing when needed most,
I was going to post a list of the records broken over the past three days in Alberta but there are too many. See here:
I was going to post a list of the records broken over the past three days in Alberta but there are too many. See here:
https://lethbridgenewsnow.com/2024/01/15/dozens-of-cold-weather-records-set-this-weekend-in-alberta/
Edmonton airport broke the all time 1972 record by 3.5 degrees C. Many other town had similar chills. I am not far from Stoney Plain. Their 1972 record low of -35 was broken by 6 degrees. Wainright broke their record by a whopping 7.2 C (-46.3).
Don’t forget climate alarmists claim it was a record warm year.
Ah, but now this is a new year.
Always an angle.
I should highlight that Edson, the town that was evacuated twice in 2023 for fires and almost immediately again for floods, broke their all time cold record by more than 11 C. They now have a record of about -46.5 C. That is about 60 km west my my place. We measured -43 C on Saturday and Sundar morning about 8AM. Edmonton was -43.4 C at the airport (which is really in Leduc).
Since Canada should be facing a federal election within the next 18 months, chances are good that the Liberals and their NDP lackeys will be out; and the more realistic Conservatives will put the brakes on most of these non-producing, undependable green projects and initiatives and get back to supporting what actually works. In Canada’s case it’s hydro, which provides almost 60 % of the electricity, and fossil fuels for heating, transportation, agriculture, and industry. Never mind renewables that consistently show they’re undependable unless in small amounts but certainly not in extreme situations. The power shortages in Alberta is yet another reminder of their limitations.
Lawyers might like to comment, but why not mount a legal case against Mr Trudeau alleging that he is attempting murder by dictating closure of hydrocarbon electricity plants?
Or a restraining order preventing closure of such plants until a certain level of steady electricity production is reached?
Or a more direct approach whereby a person or organisation advises now that it will prosecute Mr Trudeau for murder if/when a citizen dies from lack of that essential service, electricity, from dictated premature plant closure.
Geoff S
Geoff, we and neighboring Sask have already told Trudeau we won’t be pursuing any net zero 2035 policies, he will break the country if he tries.
Salut
Why does Alberta only just have enough power to survive with one power plant offline? It isn’t because of Justin. It was the policy of the former Alberta NDP Government. They started the process of removing coal power plants. We used to be a large net exporter of power. Now we can’t even survive if a single thing goes wrong.
Yes, Kenny got run over by Covid and did nothing about the NDP electricity policy except jumpstart some new gas combined cycle but it’s nowhere near enough.
Perfect timing for this lesson and smith and the UCP are coming to the end of the 6 month moratorium, they need to put the hammer down.
Story Tip: https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2024/01/the-cold-truth-about-renewable-energy.html
Similar to this article.
Ironically, Alberta is the land of fossil fuels – natural gas in abundance with increasing use for generating electricity, coal – long used for generating electricity (you can see one plant on a lake west of Edmonton near H16), and oil (used in rural areas along with propane).
IMO this is not a solar-wind story, especially as the day is short this time of year but Calgary was windy.
I see it as a story of utility not planning for colder than normal temperatures which do occur just not every year – -26C in Calgary. (I grew up north where -40C occurred in the 1950s.)
And adjacent provinces having very cold weather at the same time, BC and SK were able to help out some.
Asking people to conserve – notifications via cellular telephone – that helped, and if needed cutting off industrial facilities that had interruptable contracts.
There was some wind but they shut them down below -30c.
As always, absent when you need them most.
Cliff Mass Weather Blog: The Cold Truth About Renewable Energy in the Pacific Northwest
(While it was windy in Calgary, often air is still when quite cold.)
AB also had two NG generating plants with problems.
Two plants with problems is called normal.
100% of renewables at zero output is also normal.
Our situation here is quite simple.
We elected the NDP in 2015, just before Trudeau was elected as PM.
The NDP initiated a policy of shutting down old coal plants and converting newer ones to gas.
And then heavily into renewables while building little new dispatchible generation.
As out lined by Enmax executive Jason Doering on his Substack, we had 3 level 3 alerts from 2006-2017, since the renewables started coming online in 2017 we had 10 in 12 months, now we’ve had 3 in 3 days.
Straight line references don’t get much easier
https://jasondoering.substack.com/p/frequent-alberta-power-system-energy
In these winter systems all the renewables go to zero for days, but the predictable answer is we just need more useless renewables.
We are only weeks from the end of the moratorium on renewables approval, this incident couldn’t have come at a better time, only the most blinkered activist idiot can still claim more renewables would save us, they won’t change but now the average person sees better.
Yet another proof that we cannot rely on renewables, particularly during the winter. But the die-hard renewable proponents will still push for an ever greater percentage of renewables. That’s because they want the rest of us to die hard, i.e. freeze to death.
Dissenters on X argued that the power contributed by British Columbia was ignored;
however, as the power they contributed was primarily from hydroelectric dams, the criticism
of solar and wind remains entirely justified.