About a month ago I did some serious digging into Alberta’s electrical grid going into zero dollar hours for pricing. As in all the power on the grid, for the generators anyway, was free, for a few hours. I thought I had published it, but apparently not, as I was reminded by @ReliableAB. And funny thing is, it happened again this past weekend.
The problem with no one getting paid is no one is getting paid. No business model is sustainable like that. I don’t care about averaging things out. No one wants to give away product for free, especially if they are paying for inputs like natural gas for fuel and staffing.
And on the renewable thing:
Manitoba to encourage renewable energy while acknowledging fossil fuel use
Wind and hydro actually pair very well together, as hydro can ramp up and down very quickly. Building wind in Manitoba will allow them to build up their reservoirs and maintain more capacity overall, especially in low water conditions like the prairies have seen in recent years. So, believe it or not, I’m not wholly against that idea, for Manitoba, at least. I’m surprised they haven’t built more until now.
Also, this was from the Canadian Press. Take that for what you will.
Canada makes small emissions cut in 2023, but must ramp up to hit key targets: report
Windmills are a centuries old technology that was used for milling grain … not for powering a modern society of 8 billion people … it will never work because the idea is stupid ….. unless ….
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Unless … they plan to get rid of 7 billion ‘useless eaters’ in a big hurry ….
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“Progressives” solutions is to use the technologies of the late 19th century, like SolarPV (1883), Wind Turbines(1883), Electric Cars (1881), and Trains. They are also trying to eliminate industrial scale agriculture and modern fertilizers, and replace it with “organic” fertilizers while demanding the end of consumption of the meat from animals that can produce that “organic” fertilizer.
Some of them are actually honest, claiming they want to have a world population as low as 200 million. That those genocidal lunatics haven’t been driven from society is a problem.
Wasn’t “useless eaters” a phrase used in Stalinist USSR during the Holodomor? I just finished Anne Applebaum’s book The Red Famine, and I believe it used that term.
“a growing population … helped drive up emissions.”
If CO2 is a problem, how does it make any sense to import people from warm, low CO2 countries to Canada?
Does Alberta not have a line item charge on their bill to make up the minimum price for “sustainability”?
Ontario does it, which why the quoted $60/MWh is usually more than that.
While true that wind energy can allow hydro dams to replenish, so could coal and natural gas fired generators at a much lower cost.
If the government of Alberta absolutely, positively feels an overwhelming need to virtue-signal on this, then they should at least use the second most useless method of ‘green’ energy production: solar. Not the absolute worst, which is wind power. At least with solar (and some kind of storage) you are guaranteed to get *some* power out of them every day, and you also eliminate the horrendous maintenance requirements of the wind turbines.
So you’re saying hail catchers are better than bird shredders?
No mention here of nuclear. Does the reported re-start of Three Mile Island plant give people pause to think?
Did I read that when 50% of the cars are EV, BC needs at least 2 more Site C dams (which produce a nameplate of over 5 billion KW hours annually).
Not mention that I have seen about where the electricity for AI servers will come from nor the addional load of another million immigrants?
How will the changes coming from the NDP aboriginal land title re-write effect the build, ownership, revenue, grid connections, etc., from all the remote wind and solar farms?
If I buy a car that I can only drive occasionally and I need another reliable car to drive as a Plan B, then I’d be an idiot. (Or maybe a rich idiot.)
Wind power is for idiots. Or idiots using other people’s money.
Yeah, they’re losing 4 bucks per megawatt/hour, but they’ll make it up in volume.