A climate success story: How Alberta got off coal power

[biglentil]

Saskatchewan is arguably the most endowed energy districts on the planet. The uranium grades in Northern Saskatchewan are second to none by a factor of 100. The world average uranium mine grade is 0.10%. For example look at the latest Sask uranium discovery by ISO Energy listed on the TSXV. They recently drilled a hole grading 74% U308 over 3.5m. Every cubic meter of ore has a value of approximately $500k usd at the current $30/lb U308 price. That one cubic meter of ore has the equivalent energy density as 2.5 million barrels of oil. Needless to say I'm bullish on Uranium and ISO.V.

[Guest]

if only there was a way to turn that uranium into electricity ?

[jazz]

Surely to Christ , I am missing something ?

You are missing something. The target is capitalism, not climate.

Some people are wed to a 3 layer fantasy, climate change to renewable energy to socialist utopia.

Its just incrementalism from the left like see time and time again.

[AlbertaFarmer5]

Good and bad news today. I see a chinook arch building to the west, so wind must be blowing somewhere bringing warm air in, wind power stats impressive today.
Solar, keeps getting worse. Brooks 7 days capacity factor now down to 0.9%.

The winter pattern here in AB seems to be big wind production sporadically when it warms up(Chinook winds) and very low to non existent when it gets cold. Exactly opposite to demand on the grid. And solar in mid winter, insignificant, again, exactly opposite to demand.

[chuckChuck]

Blackspring Ridge (BSR1) is jointly owned by EDF Renewables Development and Enbridge. It is located north of Lethbridge in Carmangay, Alberta. This asset has the highest Maximum Capability for a wind plant in Alberta (300 MW). It consists of 166 wind turbines. It was added as an AESO asset in 2015. It is owned by Enbridge and EDF Renewables Development.

[chuckChuck]

Blackspring Ridge (BSR1) is jointly owned by EDF Renewables Development and Enbridge. It is located north of Lethbridge in Carmangay, Alberta. This asset has the highest Maximum Capability for a wind plant in Alberta (300 MW). It consists of 166 wind turbines. It was added as an AESO asset in 2015. It is owned by Enbridge and EDF Renewables Development.

Last 30 days.

[AlbertaFarmer5]

Meanwhile back in Brooks:
I am trying to understand the purpose of your two posts. If you were trying to disprove my observation that wind power is completely out of phase with temperature, and therefore demand in the winter in AB, perhaps you could overlay that graph with a temperature graph.
It is noteworthy that you failed to post the graph for the 30 day production at Blackrock. I checked it, and I counted 16 spikes in one month from essentially zero to essentially 100% in a matter of minutes to hours, and back again. And that is using your cherry picked month of December when its average production was far above its long term average( thanks to a very warm month with many Chinooks blowing through. Can you wrap your head around what happens when anything more than a small token amount of generation comes from such an unreliable and fast changing source? That is average of once every two days it spikes from nothing to everything and back again. Only half as bad as solar which does that everyday, except when it fails to spike such as this time of year as in the brooks example above.

No one denies that you can make electricity in large quantities when the wind blows or the sun shines. The questions are:
Is it useful at the times when it is produced? Or is it out of phase with actual demand?
Can it ever be a significant percentage of production without driving costs sky high?
Could it ever actually reduce CO2 emissions when the spinning hot reserve must be maintained while operating at its lowest efficiency 24/7? And can't use combined cycle gas, or nuclear etc as peaker plants.

You keep promising us that battery technology will solve the intermittency problem. So I keep checking the disptached contingency reserve(DCR) for wind power in Alberta, and it is still 0. When wind and solar are competitive on a level playing field, by having to bid including actual DCR, not just we will produce if the wind blows, if not, it is someone elses problem, then please come back and lets discuss what their costs are, and how useful they are.

[sumdumguy]

Just looked at this post title again and a thought just smacked me in the head. Yeh, Alberta got off coal power and passed the torch to BC, how brotherly of Alberta!

[AlbertaFarmer5]

For anyone not in south or western Alberta, to clarify why Chuck's posts above are cherry picked.
A big Chinook wind blew in last night. It warmed up 9 degrees from su down till the middle of the night. Wind power is firing on all cylinders, and demand is way down thanks to the heat.

[chuckChuck]

For anyone not in south or western Alberta, to clarify why Chuck's posts above are cherry picked.
A big Chinook wind blew in last night. It warmed up 9 degrees from su down till the middle of the night. Wind power is firing on all cylinders, and demand is way down thanks to the heat.

BSR1 is a 300mw wind farm.

BSR1 had the capacity factor of 37.6% for the last 2 years and 50.9% for the last 30 days.

Both are less cherry picked than A5s data showing very little production from solar in December and January when we all know solar production is at its lowest hours of usable sunlight and production.