Really no change

[Hamloc]

As I eat breakfast it is -42 with the wind chill. I haven’t looked at the AESO supply demand report for a long time. One change is we now have 2269 mw of wind farm generation up from 1678 last year. Not much change though, producing 111 mw, about 4.9% of production capability. Obviously no solar yet as the sun hasn’t come up. 67% of our 11377 mw of consumption is coming from natural gas. So we have increased our wind generation capacity by 35%, our solar capacity is now at 336 mw, more than double last year, but a certain times nothing or very little is produced from either. When it is -42 electricity is required for us to keep from freezing to death, plain and simple. Electric heat pumps powered by wind and solar are not the answer 24 hours a day 365 days a year in Alberta, just the reality!!

[ajl]

Pool price at 55 cents per Kwh right now. Hopefully they are smart enough not to convert any more of the 6 remaining coal fired generators to gas because now we have to compete with the utilities to heat the house. November was $6.21 per GJ for gas and December quoted at 5.69 both the highest ever.

[AlbertaFarmer5]

Pool price at 55 cents per Kwh right now. Hopefully they are smart enough not to convert any more of the 6 remaining coal fired generators to gas because now we have to compete with the utilities to heat the house. November was $6.21 per GJ for gas and December quoted at 5.69 both the highest ever.

If this were a business decision, we should keep all the coal ifrastructure in place, and all the equipment and people on standby. Use power plants to absorb the excess gas when we are in a glut situation, so the rest of the industry can function, then continue on with coal when it is more economical. The price spread would have to be enough to justify paying all the miners to be on standby.
Considering the lack of export capacity, or storage capacity, it would make an excellent buffer, to help both industries.

[TASFarms]

Your don’t have to go far back in time when natural gas rationing late winter happened . It doesn’t make the news

[bucket]

I am hoping once the liberals are finally kicked out of office in Ottawa , a more reasonable approach will be taken to powering Saskatchewan.

Shitcanning coal as a base load for power seems really stupid as it may be the least expensive power produced. Along with CCS on those plants, not sure what the problem is.

[blackpowder]

Once the coal plant equipment gone its gone. Some was well worn anyway. Some run down.
Talking through my hat but guessing a lot of time and money to switch back depending on location. Not an overnight deal?

[Oliver88]

If this were a business decision, we should keep all the coal ifrastructure in place, and all the equipment and people on standby. Use power plants to absorb the excess gas when we are in a glut situation, so the rest of the industry can function, then continue on with coal when it is more economical. The price spread would have to be enough to justify paying all the miners to be on standby.
Considering the lack of export capacity, or storage capacity, it would make an excellent buffer, to help both industries.

The irony is if Electric Vehicles become utilized in our cold climate, coal plants will be required to run at maximum capacity.

[helmsdale]

Jenner at the moment is running at 10 of 23MW, and it is an adjustable angle of attack assembly, much like Suffield, which is running at 9 of 23MW. Can confirm, that aside from it being cold, this is the absolute clearest it can possibly be with unobstructed views of that burning globe called the sun this time of year.

Capacity factor of Jenner is around 1.6% for the last 30 days. It has pretty much fallen off a cliff since the end of october. Best case it has a 13.3% capacity factor since its startup mid august.

Suffield is better at 6.3% over last 30 days, and 17.1% over its operational lifetime.

Certainly challenging to build a grid around an asset that's only putting out an average of 5% of its nameplate in the winter, and 0% for upwards of 16 hours a day during said winter.

Little bit of math, and i'll use the more generous of the two arrays...
-Suffield ties up roughly a 1/4 section.
-current power demand is 11113MW, which Im thinking if you averaged out the whole day probably looks something like 9500MW/H. Take 9500 and divide it by the capacity factor this time of year puts you at 150,793MW/H. Divide that by 23 and you end up with required capacity of somewhere around 6,556 Suffield equivalents of solar arrays. Or 6,556 1/4s of land, or 1,639 sections of land, or 45.5 Townships of land. This doesnt account for the physical space required for the quick cycling batteries, nor the electrical loss to transfer to battery, and back.

They might be kind of neat on the fringe, but there's no way this is scalable with existing technology.

[Guest]

Baby , it’s cold outside
Some of these brain dead pricks need an icicle shoved where the sun don’t shine
And keep these pipe dreams for more hospitable climes

[TOM4CWB]

Jenner at the moment is running at 10 of 23MW, and it is an adjustable angle of attack assembly, much like Suffield, which is running at 9 of 23MW. Can confirm, that aside from it being cold, this is the absolute clearest it can possibly be with unobstructed views of that burning globe called the sun this time of year.

Capacity factor of Jenner is around 1.6% for the last 30 days. It has pretty much fallen off a cliff since the end of october. Best case it has a 13.3% capacity factor since its startup mid august.

Suffield is better at 6.3% over last 30 days, and 17.1% over its operational lifetime.

Certainly challenging to build a grid around an asset that's only putting out an average of 5% of its nameplate in the winter, and 0% for upwards of 16 hours a day during said winter.

Little bit of math, and i'll use the more generous of the two arrays...
-Suffield ties up roughly a 1/4 section.
-current power demand is 11113MW, which Im thinking if you averaged out the whole day probably looks something like 9500MW/H. Take 9500 and divide it by the capacity factor this time of year puts you at 150,793MW/H. Divide that by 23 and you end up with required capacity of somewhere around 6,556 Suffield equivalents of solar arrays. Or 6,556 1/4s of land, or 1,639 sections of land, or 45.5 Townships of land. This doesnt account for the physical space required for the quick cycling batteries, nor the electrical loss to transfer to battery, and back.

They might be kind of neat on the fringe, but there's no way this is scalable with existing technology.

Just like our 2% inflation rate we now have as an official Policy (yet by 1980 standards is close to 20%)

Renewable energy (especially solar) is not sustainable, not ultimately decarbonization based, especially above the 40th parallel where energy consumption is most when the sun is at its least radiation . One ‘size’ does not work sustainably or logically… yet we are now going to convert the vast FF conversion energy projects to Nuclear energy ???

From the frying pan… into the fire…

[woodland]

The power plants out here are all humming along. Burning coal and gas currently and TransAlta says at the end of the year coal is done. Only a few acres stripped ahead of the last operating dragline so it’s probably true.

The fun has just begun.🍀

[chuckChuck]

Every year this discussion about electrcity comes up in December just before the shortest day of the year. Funny that.

There are 365 days in a year. What was the annual contribution of all generation sources? And what was the carbon emission of all sources?

As long as utilities have enough capacity either through gas, hydro, imports, cogeneration and in some cases nuclear to cover peak loads, then the intermittent sources can do their job of lowering carbon emissions and you will hardly know the difference.

Wind and solar are now some of the lowest cost generation sources, so their impact on generation costs are not as significant as some would have us believe.

Now if you are like some posters on this site who don't believe increasing carbon emissions are a problem and that human caused climate change is a threat, then I am sure you will dismiss any changes to our electrcity generation and distribution system as unnecessary and likely to fail.

[Hamloc]

Every year this discussion about electrcity comes up in December just before the shortest day of the year. Funny that.

There are 365 days in a year. What was the annual contribution of all generation sources? And what was the carbon emission of all sources?

As long as utilities have enough capacity either through gas, hydro, imports, cogeneration and in some cases nuclear to cover peak loads, then the intermittent sources can do their job of lowering carbon emissions and you will hardly know the difference.

Wind and solar are now some of the lowest cost generation sources, so their impact on generation costs are not as significant as some would have us believe.

Now if you are like some posters on this site who don't believe increasing carbon emissions are a problem and that human caused climate change is a threat, then I am sure you will dismiss any changes to our electrcity generation and distribution system as unnecessary and likely to fail.

Are they really the lowest cost? They are not a stand alone power source. You must have a second or third source ready and waiting to produce power. Look at Europe, I was just reading that the Paris based IEA found that electricity production from coal will be up 9% this year. The reason lower renewable productivity and high natural gas prices.

Simple comparison Chuck, which scenario makes more sense to you and which costs less. Let’s say you have a combine that will work 15% of the time powered by the sun, another combine that works 30% of the time and is powered by the wind. And when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing you have a third combine that works all the time except when it needs repairs obviously, that runs on diesel. So yes you emit less emissions when either of the first two work, but imagine the cost of buying 3 combines to do the job of one, first to the farmer and second to the environment!?!? Do you think this would lower his cost per acre to combine his crop?

[seldomseen]

Every year this discussion about electrcity comes up in December just before the shortest day of the year. Funny that.

There are 365 days in a year. What was the annual contribution of all generation sources? And what was the carbon emission of all sources?

As long as utilities have enough capacity either through gas, hydro, imports, cogeneration and in some cases nuclear to cover peak loads, then the intermittent sources can do their job of lowering carbon emissions and you will hardly know the difference.

Wind and solar are now some of the lowest cost generation sources, so their impact on generation costs are not as significant as some would have us believe.

Now if you are like some posters on this site who don't believe increasing carbon emissions are a problem and that human caused climate change is a threat, then I am sure you will dismiss any changes to our electrcity generation and distribution system as unnecessary and likely to fail.

It comes up at this time of year because if you haven't noticed the temps is about -30 or lower and the machine making heat in the basement becomes very important and needs to be reliable or life gets very uncomfortable very quickly. Again if you haven't noticed at the end of June heating your house is not that important.

[TASFarms]

Are they really the lowest cost? They are not a stand alone power source. You must have a second or third source ready and waiting to produce power. Look at Europe, I was just reading that the Paris based IEA found that electricity production from coal will be up 9% this year. The reason lower renewable productivity and high natural gas prices.

Simple comparison Chuck, which scenario makes more sense to you and which costs less. Let’s say you have a combine that will work 15% of the time powered by the sun, another combine that works 30% of the time and is powered by the wind. And when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing you have a third combine that works all the time except when it needs repairs obviously, that runs on diesel. So yes you emit less emissions when either of the first two work, but imagine the cost of buying 3 combines to do the job of one, first to the farmer and second to the environment!?!? Do you think this would lower his cost per acre to combine his crop?

Change it from farmer to custom harvester. And charge $90 an acre to cover the capital costs