Alerts demonstrate why flexibility is needed in Ottawa’s Clean Energy Regulations to decarbonize the country’s electricity grids, according to energy and environmental economist Andrew Leach.
The issue is not you and me running an extra space heater at home.
The issue is massive corporate energy waste, and the fact that one key CoGen plant had an unplanned outage due to extreme cold weather.
Any other narrative has been built to make you, the paying customer, think you are part of the problem. You are not.
Good analysis here; apologies for TikTok: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZM6Q8D292/
Yeah. AESO correctly identifies that individuals reducing demand saved the day for them, but I don’t buy any direct or tacit suggestion that people needing to heat their house caused the problem. The suppliers and the privatized grid did that, in much the same way as Texas with their winter storms.
A privatized grid means that things work fine and all when things go well but when they don’t, taxpayers foot the bill for corporate (at a cool $1/kWh) and are literally left out in the cold and dark.
AB, SK (and MB a little) will hum and haw about how “renewable grids did this” as usual but just like Texas again Natural gas makes up the largest generation portion and these issues are happening because of problems on that end.
Thanks for a high quality reply / addition. What’s the source for that chart? I’m not 100% sure how to interpret it.
It’s from Alberta Electric System Operator: https://www.aeso.ca/market/market-and-system-reporting/.
The graph is of the wholesale price of electricity to suppliers. In Alberta, you can “choose” who bills you for your power… In Edmonton for example, you can choose between regulated monthly variable price, fixed, and “market-rate” plans for the privilege of paying $1/kWh only when you need it most. Compare to Toronto or Vancouver which have rates based on time of use or monthly usage, each which save you way more on average.
It’s almost as if you would need to be an idiot or a liar to blame “green energy” when some fossil-fuel generators went down.
Alberta is trying waaay to hard to be Texas.
Here is the average total cost of electricity by province, based on a monthly consumption of 1,000kWh:
Northwest Territories 41.0¢/kWh
Nunavut 35.4¢/kWh
Alberta 25.8¢/kWh
Saskatchewan 19.9¢/kWh
Yukon Territory 18.7¢/kWh
Prince Edward Island 18.4¢/kWh
Nova Scotia 18.3¢/kWh
Nfld & Labrador 14.8¢/kWh
Ontario 14.1¢/kWh
New Brunswick 13.9¢/kWh
British Columbia 11.4¢/kWh
Manitoba 10.2¢/kWh
Quebec 7.8¢/kWhhttps://www.energyhub.org/electricity-prices/
The Alberta system exists to funnel money into the private utilities and ensure that electricity remains uncompetitive with fossil fuels.
it’s a harsh reality that climate change will put increased strain on aging infrastructure, one of the many challenges we’re going to have to overcome.
And this probably didn’t help.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The Alberta Emergency Management Agency (AEMA) urged Albertans to turn off unnecessary lights, avoid cooking with a stove and delay charging electric vehicles.
Shortly after the alert was issued, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe put out a tweet, saying his province was providing 153 megawatts of power to Alberta to help them during the shortage.
“That power will be coming from natural gas and coal-fired plants, the ones the Trudeau government is telling us to shut down (which we won’t),” Moe wrote.
He says just because other markets in the U.S. and Canada can make this switch to largely renewable systems without risking grid reliability, that doesn’t mean that Alberta and Saskatchewan are being too pro-fossil fuel when they push back.
AESO’s Leif Sollid said immediately after Saturday’s emergency alert was issued, people in the system control room could see a drop in power demand.
"It’s simple things… things like not running your dishwasher, not doing laundry, not plugging in your car, putting your block heater on a timer so it’s drawing power outside of that 4 to 7 p.m. window.
The original article contains 953 words, the summary contains 179 words. Saved 81%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
