Brian Zinchuk: Alberta won the energy lottery, yet it had to beg its neighbours if they could spare a megawatt.
Also:
Quick Dick McDick goes cooking with The Dam Smokehouse
Brian Zinchuk: Alberta won the energy lottery, yet it had to beg its neighbours if they could spare a megawatt.
Also:
Quick Dick McDick goes cooking with The Dam Smokehouse
When are the people going to put a stop to government insanity? We own the country, not those we elect to do the business of OUR country. If they are so incompetent and ideology bound then they have have to leave office and be replaced with people who respect humanity and not pie in the sky climate nonsense or destroy freedom because of a flu virus, then tax every breath we take.
Why people are not outraged and up in arms is beyond this old man’s comprehension. I never thought I would live long enough to see the foolishness that people are willing to put up with these days. There are more of us than they are of them.
Yes, grid control must assume that wind and solar will provide zero power to the grid and plan accordingly. Redundancy has always been a part of grid planning and design to ensure reliability and stability. I suspect that in the rush to build wind and solar, adequate redundancy has been diminished. There is only a fixed amount of money available and it has been misallocated to intermittent wind and solar power instead of natgas backup power.
One solution is to make wind and solar operations financially responsible for maintaining a defined level of electricity production because right now they are free riders on the grid. Intermittent power sources should have to either build reliable backup for their wind and solar operations at their own expense or pay into a fund that builds reliable backup power.
Saskpower should just scrap their wind and solar agreement with the federal government and use that money to build nuclear, which also has zero carbon dioxide emissions but is a reliable baseload power source. Wind and solar are nothing but a dangerous parasite that weakens grid reliability.
Great article Brian. I enjoy your logic and research talents.
Do you , or anyone out there, know if Alberta or Saskatchewan have coal fired plants that are sitting idle today? Or have they begun demolition and removal of equipment? Or perhaps they have just been converted to natural gas burners?
With Saskpower’s BDPS unit 4 back in service, I’m pretty sure that all of 4 of Saskpower’s coal units are running at BDPS. Shand’s one coal power unit is running. Poplar River 1 and 2 coal units are back in service after a freak flooding incident caused by a farmer’s water reservoir failure last year. So, at the moment, no coal units are idle but it remains to be seen if BDPS 4 will be idled and returned to standby as electricity demand lowers.
BDPS 1 and 2 were taken out of service a while back (old, low MW units built in the 1950s, IIRC). BDPS unit 3 is carbon capture. Queen Elizabeth power station was converted to gas many years ago and the gas units are finicky, to be charitable. It was the only coal facility converted to gas.
An interesting side note : Shand power station was originally designed to add one more coal unit and Poplar River was originally designed to add two more coal units.
I knew about Shand 2 – at one point they considered doing a very experimental and pricey “oxyfuel” for Unit 2, but that was canned.
I was not aware of the possibility of expanding Poplar River. Given the low water conditions they have had there in recent years, I doubt they could have had enough water to run four units. That also tells me there must be a hell of a lot more coal – which I’m fairly certain there is. I’ve seen some maps.
Lignite coal is abundant. Not the nicest coal but lots of it. The Shand oxyfuel must have been after my time. A previous plant chemist was quite interested in coal gasification instead of carbon capture for BDPS.
Coronach’s dam is a pretty big water body. I’m surprised they’ve had issues. Although, Lake Diefenbaker is also quite low which has affected hydro power at Coteau Creek.
Q: how many MWh were removed from grid when Notley prematurely abolished coal plants?
Q: has that amount been re-established with other dependable Alberta sources?
Alberta Electric Cap & Gen History is here: https://www.auc.ab.ca/annual-electricity-data/
Quick analysis:
2015 – 2022: Coal cap down 5MW / NG cap up 5MW / Total up 2MW (from wind & solar)
2015 – 2022: Coal gen down 30GW / NG gen up 30GW / Total up 2GW (from wind & solar)
2015 – 2022 Interchange: Exports steady at 640 GW / Imports up 3000 GW (thanks Rachel)
Summary: Red Rachel traded 3000 GW of Imported electricity for 2 GW of wind and solar.
I was looking into that last night or the night before. As far as I can tell, 758 megawatts of coal were shut down and not repowered with gas. Most of the plants were converted, but not all. And that shortfall would have gone a long way over the weekend.
I did a quick dive on this.
There was a 2012 Federal Regulation limiting coal lifespan – Clean Air Act. Provincial agreements in 2015-2016 (NDP) and Federal amendments in 2018 reduced those lifespans further. At the end of 2019 Alberta Gov’t revamped the Carbon Competitiveness Regulation and added a carbon tax on big industrial emitters, further penalizing coal.
Sundance 3 was retired July 2020, followed by 5 & 4 by March 2022. Keephills 1 was retired Dec 2021, all TransAlta plants. All had 8-9 years left before regulations demanded their shut down.
Wiki articles list the MW they offered. I haven’t delved further than checking there.
Sundance Unit 3, 368 MW – built 1976 (Retired July 31, 2020);
Sundance Unit 4, 406 MW – built 1977 (Converted to cofired January 1, 2022) – retired Mar 31, 2022
Sundance Unit 5, 406 MW – built 1978 (Suspended September 28, 2021);
Keephills unit 1, 395 MW – built 1983 – retired on December 31, 2021
That is a loss of almost 1600 MW on early phased out coal – duo coal/gas plants because of the regulatory environment. 6 others with lifespans past 2030 were converted to gas with $$ encouragement from the NDP.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generating_stations_in_Alberta
There is a good (albeit outdated) chart on page here listing the 18 plants and what they were up to in 2018.
https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/alberta-coal-phase-out.pdf
For 7.5 billion people on the planet, Coal is a blessing. For the half billion of the progressive in-crowd that dominate the culture and politics of the west, its symbolic elimination is worth the price of thousands of deaths from poverty and cold temperature, well, except for the Germans…. and perhaps the stubble-jumpers and……
Utter insanity.
But awesome for those who are sucking up the renewable contracts and government subsidies.
Too bad I don’t know anyone who is.