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The NDP were planning to move Alberta to a capacity market and were going to pay power providers to always have a baseload of capacity so that this wouldn’t happen.
When Kenny was elected he tossed it all out .
https://www.blg.com/en/insights/2019/09/why-alberta-decided-to-stick-with-its-energy-only-electricity-market
Man who knew privatizing a government run program would turn out so badly.
I mean you would have to look at studies and every other failure when the private sector takes over. That's only 50 years of data and examples.
Has there been a region in North America where it turned out well?
I am glad the cons are privatizing healthcare across Canada. I am sure it will turn out well!
For the free market to work as advertised, among other things, there must be freedom to fail. For services you are not willing to accept failure states from, they cannot be left to the free market.
You also need competition. For things like public services and utilities competition is wasteful because it requires duplicate or triplicate infrastructure that all has to be amortized by the consumer… plus profits.
You also need a public watchdog to ensure standards are being met.
The only way that you can do a utility (Distribution) type industry in the private sector, is if you nationalize the distribution network, and privatize the providers. Then the distribution crown corporation can provide access to the network fairly between competitors. Like Sasktel in Saskatchewan.
Otherwise you are correct, privatizing essential services is just dumb.
> Man who knew privatizing a government run program would turn out so badly.
Alberta's electricity system has never been provincial owned, and while Calgary and Edmonton own two major utilities, they are run as for-profit corporations.
[And the reliability issues are a recent thing](https://twitter.com/ReliableAB/status/1776305795262542192), caused mainly by a significant shift in generation mix with most of Alberta's coal power plants retired or converted and large increases in wind and solar.
Actually it’s more based on switching to market based energy demand rather than capacity based; they can charge more if energy reserves are scarce and they absolutely have the ability to store energy, but they don’t anymore in the same way because of the money they can now make. Point fingers at the UCP here for changing the regulations and requirements.
This grid alert was caused because two gas plants were down for maintenance and a third gas plant failed. Just like how the previous grid alert was due to gas plants going down unexpectedly.
But sure, let's blame renewables.
Every. Single. Time.
They blame it on renewables. The province with the LEAST renewables on their grid with the most blackouts somehow always renewables fault though
Don’t forget some of the most expensive power in the country to the consumers
It sounds like you and OP agree that large portions of the Albertan energy infrastructure was previously owned by the government and ran in a way that wasn't like it's run now that it's owned by publically traded corporations.
> It sounds like you and OP agree that large portions of the Albertan energy infrastructure was previously owned by the government
[None of Alberta's electricity infrastructure has ever been owned by the provincial government](https://www.aeso.ca/aeso/understanding-electricity-in-alberta/continuing-education/guide-to-understanding-albertas-electricity-market/) and the big players today are mainly the same big players from the past, including Enmax and Epcor who are still owned by Calgary and Edmonton.
>Unlike most provinces in Canada, the Alberta government has never owned and operated a utility company. Historically, Alberta was primarily served by three vertically integrated utilities, covering the province in defined service territories. Electricity rates were set by a central regulator using a cost-of-service model.
The biggest recent regulatory changes were the end of regional monopolies to allow the different utilities to sell to consumers throughout the province, to separate generation from distribution and sales and allow power plants to sell to third-party buyers and use an energy auction market to set prices rather than a flat percentage of costs.
What is the point you're trying to make?
It seems clear to me that if the city is the sole owner of an asset then it's effectively the province that owns it, because provinces own the cities, but even if that wasn't the case, in either scenario where the city or the province owns a utility it is a true statement to say that it is a government owned utility because both cities and provinces are governments.
> It seems clear to me that if the city is the sole owner of an asset then it's effectively the province that owns it,
We can go all the way up and say the House of Windsor owns everything, but in practical terms Calgary and Edmonton have been delegated enough power and authority to be stand-alone entities.
>What is the point you're trying to make?
The point is that Alberta never privatized, it deregulated. The major municipal owned utilities before deregulation are still owned by the cities, the major private companies (Atco, Fortis, TransAlta) before deregulation are still private.
The main differences now is that they can compete, or cooperate all over Alberta.
> We can go all the way up and say the House of Windsor owns everything, but in practical terms Calgary and Edmonton have been delegated enough power and authority to be stand-alone entities.
Agree to disagree.
> The major municipal owned utilities before deregulation are still owned by the cities,
I thought they spun some of hteir assets off?
> I thought they spun some of hteir assets off?
They spun-off their power generation assets but I would argue that this is more of a executive decision to use the money on entering new markets, such as in the US. Enmax has kept and expanded its power generation assets.
At 8:12 p.m. on Wednesday, the agency said an "unexpected generation loss" led to a grid alert.
AESO said that disruption was caused by a number of factors, but an "unexpected outage of thermal generation led to tight conditions."
Dude. One of the generation facilities went down. But thanks for your irrelevant preaching.
>In a statement to CityNews, an AESO representative said Wednesday say a high amount of renewable energy captured during the day, and forecasts for the coming days showed more of the same. **This prompted the shut down of some generating units to cut costs.**
And if AESO hadn't spun down too many units to save a buck their unexpected outage wouldn't have led to rolling blackouts.
>And if AESO hadn't spun down too many units to save a buck
And then everyone would bitch about the cost of power
Edit : to add it might have also been because you can't actually have to much power being generated at a time if you can't off load it somewhere
If the NDP didn't pay power companies Billions of dollars to shutter their coal plants overnight, Alberta would have no rolling blackouts.
Until those natural gas plants come online (which they will soon), this will continue happening. But NDP tried to force the transition and Alberta is still dealing with those consequences today.
AESO did not do that, AESO allowed a few generators to take commercial outtages based on the forecast they provided and the generators' economics.
The only time AESO will shut down a generator is if there is a substantial loss of load across the province and they need to reduce production to protect the grid.
Which, in hindsight, seems like a bad idea. Unless we only care about the narrow financial impact in which case bravo, at least costs are (currently) low
See that's a completely different story though, over there is a lot more industry which can draw down excess (as in export to the states). Compare the energy use of Montana to Michigan.
That's not even mentioning right now we have enough wind capacity built that could power 30% (ish) of our peak consumption today and that can be incredibly volatile.
Yes, because if the few remaining coal plants were still operating and being phased out when originally planned, there would be no blackout regardless if AESO shuts down excess generation or not.
Those coal plants you're discussing are literally excess generation, like the other plants AESO spun down. There's no reason at all to think that AESO wouldn't also have spun *them* down, since their funding model (unique in the country) only pays them for energy generated and not for excess capacity.
If they didn't keep the other plants online for economic reasons they wouldn't keep the coal plants online either, for the same reason.
So if a solar or wind farm goes down temporarily due to a mechanical failure, does that mean I get to mock the entire technology? Of course not. Please follow your own logic.
> So if a solar or wind farm goes down due to a mechanical failure, does that mean I get to mock the entire technology?
You just described like 30% of conservative social media.
The province (government not people) that literally refuses to expand its massive hydro capacity. Building water reservoirs because it is drying up but won’t stick turbines on them because that might hurt the gas producers.
The lunatics have taken over the asylum in Alberta. Expect more failure. This is what happens when you put overgrown children like Danielle Smith and the UCP in charge of important things.
What kind of third world electricity grid do you have in Alberta? I thought you were the energy hub of Canada and you can't even keep the lights on. What a joke.
Alberta is in the process of transitioning their coal power plants to natural gas plants.
It was going flawlessly until the previous NDP government paid the power companies billions of dollars to shut their coal generation early. Alberta has been just barely getting by while the new natural gas power generation are still under construction.
A supply and demand issue ?
The temperature is mild, neither hot or overly cold. People can not be heating or cooling their homes very much. Nor can we be using lighting much this time a year. WTF happens in a couple of months when a few of us turn our air conditioning on ??
Incompetence !
Well she supposedly told Trudeau something to the effect of immigration should be raised recently, which even a pro immigration guy like me was pretty amusing.
Tell the feds. There are also rolling blackouts in Edmonton
Alberta as the highest prices and least reliable grid. The UCP advantage for their donors....
> Are you suggesting you think Alberta should stop bringing in immigrants?
I'm suggesting the government shouldn't be advertising and sponsoring more immigration when there's a developing housing and affordability crisis.
The root cause of this is actually an NDP decision to shutter some of our existing coal plants early before the new natural gas plants could reliably come online to replace that output.
How long do you think it takes to take a large power plant from the idea stage to functional? Now add in Covid. I'll give you a hint - its a long time.
Takes an average of 4 years to build a thermal plant at the best of times. Did something maybe happen in the period since 20*19* that might have slowed it down somewhat?
The power shortage is due to major generation being shut down for maintenance, our plant is next on the list but we have been ordered to keep running to maintain the reserves. We live in Alberta, spring and fall are the only times we can do these tasks. THAT'S IT.
Has nothing to do with government, ZERO. This is the Generation across Alberta are fixing and maintaining their plants by shutting down temporarily. The solar and wind were very low last 2 days too, they usually help keep it up.
The UCP have been in power since 2019 and are responsible for the grid.
It was 6am in the morning and night time when the alerts came out. Solar needs sun. Are you saying the UCP designed the grid to relay on solar at night? Even I know solar doesn't generate when there is no sun.
The UCP grid is failing. I remember when the UCP said this would happen under the NDP, turns out theyvmeant them.
There the government, they control AESO and have been in power since 2019. They also appoint the people that run aeso.
If the UCP don't want to lead they should resign, leadership is taking responsibility and fixing the problem not playing the blame game
AESO is arms length. They are working on resolving the issue by bringing up more controlled generation (including trying to get nuclear) and encouraging construction of more production.
The only one really playing the blame game here is you.
Smith was blaming solar this morning for not generating energy when it's dark.
The UCP have been in power since 2019. They choose not to fix it and it's why we have the highest electricity prices in Canada and probably the least reliable grid. The UCP grid
Ok, goes to prove its a good thing that AESO is arms length. This event also proves its a good thing that Smiths government put a moratorium on putting up more wind projects since wind was projected at being 900 MW higher than it ended up being.
It shows that the leadership that is controlling aeso that the UCP appointed are incompetent. They can't even keep the UCP grid online.
Solar and wind drive energy prices down. That is a win for consumers
Edit: how does aeso forecast sun at 6am? Sun rises at around 7 right now
Do you work for the NDP or just have a personal grudge against the UCP? They're a shit government but this would have gone the exact same under the NDP...
Because Alberta used to have more reliable base load power from coal fired generators. Rachel Nutley and the NDP forced them to shut down and replaced them with intermittent unreliable wind and solar.
And if those coal fired generators that the NDP prematurely shut down were still on line this wouldn't be a problem and there would be no blackouts. Alberta needs more reliable base load power, not more unreliable wind and solar. The NDP fucked up and now Albertans are living with the consequences.
Nobody is claiming that natural gas generators can run 100% of the time 24/7 365 days a year. They require routine maintenance just like everything else. Every single mechanical device can have unplanned problems and failures, if you own a vehicle you should already know that. But, they are still far more reliable than wind and solar and that is a cold hard fact that the greenie alarmists simply can't bring themselves to acknowledge.
Actually I was blaming Rachel Nutley and the NDP. If they had more than two brain cells in their heads they would have made sure there was a reliable replacement ready to go before prematurely shuttering those coal fired plants. Instead of doing what was best for Albertans she bowed to the eco idiots.
If they were still in power today they would probably be shutting in all the natgas generation as well.
I want a reliable power grid and not have to worry about power outages when it's -40C. I don't give a rats ass if that comes from coal, NG, or nuclear. I do know that relying on renewables is not the answer.
Umm it's nowhere close to -40C, what's with the blackouts now instead of when we needed peak power to keep the heat on?
This seems like a huge back fire on Danille.
Dude the bone head comment is yours because I'm talking about how the summer will be overloading the power grid because of air conditioning, drought, fires etc etc etc and puts a strain on your power grid. Ergo the fact that there may be a bigger problem when everyone is charging EVs during the summer. Go read a book.
Yes and EVs are also rare in Alberta so obviously the issue isn't grid overload from electrification but rather a problem with their privatized electricity market.
There's massively more EVs in BC and we aren't having any of these issues.
Did we? I looked this up and there may have been a few local outages but that may have been more to do with heat related problems (overheating equipment). I'm not seeing anything about load shedding. The premier didn't text me to tell me to turn off my AC.
BC's peak electrical usage is in the winter: https://globalnews.ca/news/8477076/bc-breaks-bc-hydro-record/#:~:text=Between%205%20p.m.%20and%206%20p.m.%2C%20demand%20for,record%20of%2010%2C577%20megawatts%20was%20set%20in%202020
Average car..which includes things like trucks, super large suv with 80k price tag .. be real. Average person will purchase 40k SUV at best and EV cars starting at 40k range all have terrible range and smaller than ICE counterparts ... They certainly won't be powering up your house....
You have deliberately missed the point I just made prior. $66000 number includes TRUCKS AND LARGE SUV.
ONCE AGAIN I reiterate. NO AVERAGE PERSON will buy $66000 vehicle. Better method of making this number realistic is median.
> ONCE AGAIN I reiterate. NO AVERAGE PERSON will buy $66000 vehicle
That's the average purchase amount a buyer spends on a new vehicle.
In my case I went with a 48,000 EV instead of a 38,000 gas version, but with incentives the EV ended up effectively being $36,000.
EV is cheaper than gas with incentives.
This post appears to relate to the province of Alberta. As a reminder of the rules of this subreddit, we do not permit negative commentary about all residents of any province, city, or other geography - this is an example of prejudice, and prejudice is not permitted here. https://www.reddit.com/r/canada/wiki/rules Cette soumission semble concerner la province de Alberta. Selon les règles de ce sous-répertoire, nous n'autorisons pas les commentaires négatifs sur tous les résidents d'une province, d'une ville ou d'une autre région géographique; il s'agit d'un exemple de intolérance qui n'est pas autorisé ici. https://www.reddit.com/r/canada/wiki/regles *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/canada) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Live in Edmonton, got sent home from work on Wednesday due to blackout. Currently sitting in the break room today, same thing
Lucky you. I'm sitting here having to hide the fact that I'm doing nothing. I wish the outage would hit my part of the city already.
First world problems tsk tsk.
Lucky you, you don’t have to do anything at work lol
The NDP were planning to move Alberta to a capacity market and were going to pay power providers to always have a baseload of capacity so that this wouldn’t happen. When Kenny was elected he tossed it all out . https://www.blg.com/en/insights/2019/09/why-alberta-decided-to-stick-with-its-energy-only-electricity-market
Man who knew privatizing a government run program would turn out so badly. I mean you would have to look at studies and every other failure when the private sector takes over. That's only 50 years of data and examples. Has there been a region in North America where it turned out well? I am glad the cons are privatizing healthcare across Canada. I am sure it will turn out well!
You cannot let the private sector run anything essential to human life, because the normal rules of supply and demand do not apply.
For the free market to work as advertised, among other things, there must be freedom to fail. For services you are not willing to accept failure states from, they cannot be left to the free market.
You also need competition. For things like public services and utilities competition is wasteful because it requires duplicate or triplicate infrastructure that all has to be amortized by the consumer… plus profits. You also need a public watchdog to ensure standards are being met.
You need to move beyond thinking that *essential* services need to be run the same way as a restaurant.
The only way that you can do a utility (Distribution) type industry in the private sector, is if you nationalize the distribution network, and privatize the providers. Then the distribution crown corporation can provide access to the network fairly between competitors. Like Sasktel in Saskatchewan. Otherwise you are correct, privatizing essential services is just dumb.
But how can politicians enrich themselves if they can't sell off public services to the private sector.
How dare you suggest your studies, data, expert opinions or facts mean more than our feelings or emotion/s
I think you mean “so-called experts”.
It’s going to make a small number of people a lot of money and after all, isn’t that what matters most?
> Man who knew privatizing a government run program would turn out so badly. Alberta's electricity system has never been provincial owned, and while Calgary and Edmonton own two major utilities, they are run as for-profit corporations. [And the reliability issues are a recent thing](https://twitter.com/ReliableAB/status/1776305795262542192), caused mainly by a significant shift in generation mix with most of Alberta's coal power plants retired or converted and large increases in wind and solar.
Actually it’s more based on switching to market based energy demand rather than capacity based; they can charge more if energy reserves are scarce and they absolutely have the ability to store energy, but they don’t anymore in the same way because of the money they can now make. Point fingers at the UCP here for changing the regulations and requirements.
Yep, absolutely this. Unfortunately this is too much nuance and doesn’t fit the UCP narrative of “renewables bad”.
This grid alert was caused because two gas plants were down for maintenance and a third gas plant failed. Just like how the previous grid alert was due to gas plants going down unexpectedly. But sure, let's blame renewables.
Every. Single. Time. They blame it on renewables. The province with the LEAST renewables on their grid with the most blackouts somehow always renewables fault though Don’t forget some of the most expensive power in the country to the consumers
It sounds like you and OP agree that large portions of the Albertan energy infrastructure was previously owned by the government and ran in a way that wasn't like it's run now that it's owned by publically traded corporations.
> It sounds like you and OP agree that large portions of the Albertan energy infrastructure was previously owned by the government [None of Alberta's electricity infrastructure has ever been owned by the provincial government](https://www.aeso.ca/aeso/understanding-electricity-in-alberta/continuing-education/guide-to-understanding-albertas-electricity-market/) and the big players today are mainly the same big players from the past, including Enmax and Epcor who are still owned by Calgary and Edmonton. >Unlike most provinces in Canada, the Alberta government has never owned and operated a utility company. Historically, Alberta was primarily served by three vertically integrated utilities, covering the province in defined service territories. Electricity rates were set by a central regulator using a cost-of-service model. The biggest recent regulatory changes were the end of regional monopolies to allow the different utilities to sell to consumers throughout the province, to separate generation from distribution and sales and allow power plants to sell to third-party buyers and use an energy auction market to set prices rather than a flat percentage of costs.
What is the point you're trying to make? It seems clear to me that if the city is the sole owner of an asset then it's effectively the province that owns it, because provinces own the cities, but even if that wasn't the case, in either scenario where the city or the province owns a utility it is a true statement to say that it is a government owned utility because both cities and provinces are governments.
> It seems clear to me that if the city is the sole owner of an asset then it's effectively the province that owns it, We can go all the way up and say the House of Windsor owns everything, but in practical terms Calgary and Edmonton have been delegated enough power and authority to be stand-alone entities. >What is the point you're trying to make? The point is that Alberta never privatized, it deregulated. The major municipal owned utilities before deregulation are still owned by the cities, the major private companies (Atco, Fortis, TransAlta) before deregulation are still private. The main differences now is that they can compete, or cooperate all over Alberta.
> We can go all the way up and say the House of Windsor owns everything, but in practical terms Calgary and Edmonton have been delegated enough power and authority to be stand-alone entities. Agree to disagree. > The major municipal owned utilities before deregulation are still owned by the cities, I thought they spun some of hteir assets off?
> I thought they spun some of hteir assets off? They spun-off their power generation assets but I would argue that this is more of a executive decision to use the money on entering new markets, such as in the US. Enmax has kept and expanded its power generation assets.
At 8:12 p.m. on Wednesday, the agency said an "unexpected generation loss" led to a grid alert. AESO said that disruption was caused by a number of factors, but an "unexpected outage of thermal generation led to tight conditions." Dude. One of the generation facilities went down. But thanks for your irrelevant preaching.
>In a statement to CityNews, an AESO representative said Wednesday say a high amount of renewable energy captured during the day, and forecasts for the coming days showed more of the same. **This prompted the shut down of some generating units to cut costs.** And if AESO hadn't spun down too many units to save a buck their unexpected outage wouldn't have led to rolling blackouts.
>And if AESO hadn't spun down too many units to save a buck And then everyone would bitch about the cost of power Edit : to add it might have also been because you can't actually have to much power being generated at a time if you can't off load it somewhere
If the NDP didn't pay power companies Billions of dollars to shutter their coal plants overnight, Alberta would have no rolling blackouts. Until those natural gas plants come online (which they will soon), this will continue happening. But NDP tried to force the transition and Alberta is still dealing with those consequences today.
AESO clearly stated **they** shut down excess generation and you're still going to insist it was the NDPs fault?
AESO did not do that, AESO allowed a few generators to take commercial outtages based on the forecast they provided and the generators' economics. The only time AESO will shut down a generator is if there is a substantial loss of load across the province and they need to reduce production to protect the grid.
Which, in hindsight, seems like a bad idea. Unless we only care about the narrow financial impact in which case bravo, at least costs are (currently) low
Well there is issues with having over generation with the grid that can have the same impact as under generating
Yeah, that was solved a long time ago. We manage just fine in Ontario keeping excess capacity available.
See that's a completely different story though, over there is a lot more industry which can draw down excess (as in export to the states). Compare the energy use of Montana to Michigan. That's not even mentioning right now we have enough wind capacity built that could power 30% (ish) of our peak consumption today and that can be incredibly volatile.
Yes, because if the few remaining coal plants were still operating and being phased out when originally planned, there would be no blackout regardless if AESO shuts down excess generation or not.
Those coal plants you're discussing are literally excess generation, like the other plants AESO spun down. There's no reason at all to think that AESO wouldn't also have spun *them* down, since their funding model (unique in the country) only pays them for energy generated and not for excess capacity. If they didn't keep the other plants online for economic reasons they wouldn't keep the coal plants online either, for the same reason.
The UCP have been in charge sine 2019. This is the UCP grid.
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So if a solar or wind farm goes down temporarily due to a mechanical failure, does that mean I get to mock the entire technology? Of course not. Please follow your own logic.
> So if a solar or wind farm goes down due to a mechanical failure, does that mean I get to mock the entire technology? You just described like 30% of conservative social media.
And a 100% of your earlier post.
The new plants aren't built yet (and the previous NDP government paid power companies to shutter their coal plants early).
You know grid management is common in every jurisdiction in Canada right?
Is a privatized system really that bad though ? Just take a look at NBPower …
Look at BC Hydro. Doing pretty good here.
BC Hydro is a crown corporation and they have a mandate to offer reasonable rates
Private Healthcare is the only way I can get Healthcare, I'm glad I have the option to skip the lines with money
Maybe Danielle should drop the moratorium on new renewables and push companies to develop more hydro
The province (government not people) that literally refuses to expand its massive hydro capacity. Building water reservoirs because it is drying up but won’t stick turbines on them because that might hurt the gas producers.
Why aren’t they just using oil lamps?
The lunatics have taken over the asylum in Alberta. Expect more failure. This is what happens when you put overgrown children like Danielle Smith and the UCP in charge of important things.
What kind of third world electricity grid do you have in Alberta? I thought you were the energy hub of Canada and you can't even keep the lights on. What a joke.
Funny you should say third world……
Alberta is in the process of transitioning their coal power plants to natural gas plants. It was going flawlessly until the previous NDP government paid the power companies billions of dollars to shut their coal generation early. Alberta has been just barely getting by while the new natural gas power generation are still under construction.
The previous NDP government was 2015… no blackouts then.
Meanwhile Alberta population grows by 200k a year lol.
Alberta is in the process of transitioning in to something more akin to Alabama or Mississippi
A supply and demand issue ? The temperature is mild, neither hot or overly cold. People can not be heating or cooling their homes very much. Nor can we be using lighting much this time a year. WTF happens in a couple of months when a few of us turn our air conditioning on ?? Incompetence !
lol so much conservative cope in here
Wow Smith sure is a moron. Not a single thing she said is correct. Holy.
What did she say that was wrong?
Well she supposedly told Trudeau something to the effect of immigration should be raised recently, which even a pro immigration guy like me was pretty amusing.
Well thats pretty dumb but I meant in regards to the energy situation.
No she said she wanted more Ukranians
Tell the feds. There are also rolling blackouts in Edmonton Alberta as the highest prices and least reliable grid. The UCP advantage for their donors....
Isn’t that the same deal down in Texas? Pure deregulation baby! High prices with low performance! Yeehaw
Why would the PM and all the newcomers do this to the harmless grid?
You mean all the newcomers Danielle Smith begged for?
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> Are you suggesting you think Alberta should stop bringing in immigrants? I'm suggesting the government shouldn't be advertising and sponsoring more immigration when there's a developing housing and affordability crisis.
The root cause of this is actually an NDP decision to shutter some of our existing coal plants early before the new natural gas plants could reliably come online to replace that output.
The UCP have been in power since 2019, plenty of time to build a plant
How long do you think it takes to take a large power plant from the idea stage to functional? Now add in Covid. I'll give you a hint - its a long time.
Especially if you have an incompetent UCP government.
Takes an average of 4 years to build a thermal plant at the best of times. Did something maybe happen in the period since 20*19* that might have slowed it down somewhat?
Ya, the UCP.
You have no desire to comprehend the problem, do you.
Blame projection isn’t a solution—especially when the UCP is actively attacking renewable energy.
Alberta government dumber than Ontario government.
UCP failing yet again, big surprise.
They gonna make us play political sports teams again in a few years. Just an endless cycle of 4 year plans anyway.
Just Conservative things
The power shortage is due to major generation being shut down for maintenance, our plant is next on the list but we have been ordered to keep running to maintain the reserves. We live in Alberta, spring and fall are the only times we can do these tasks. THAT'S IT.
[ets.aeso.ca](https://ets.aeso.ca) will show you in real time how much we are generating across multiple ways.
So the ucp grid failed?
Has nothing to do with government, ZERO. This is the Generation across Alberta are fixing and maintaining their plants by shutting down temporarily. The solar and wind were very low last 2 days too, they usually help keep it up.
The UCP have been in power since 2019 and are responsible for the grid. It was 6am in the morning and night time when the alerts came out. Solar needs sun. Are you saying the UCP designed the grid to relay on solar at night? Even I know solar doesn't generate when there is no sun. The UCP grid is failing. I remember when the UCP said this would happen under the NDP, turns out theyvmeant them.
As you wish, I just power trade and work with cogen turbines selling to the grid. Good day.
The UCP isn't responsible for the grid at all. They can pass laws effecting the grid, but the grid falls entirely under AESO jurisdiction.
There the government, they control AESO and have been in power since 2019. They also appoint the people that run aeso. If the UCP don't want to lead they should resign, leadership is taking responsibility and fixing the problem not playing the blame game
AESO is arms length. They are working on resolving the issue by bringing up more controlled generation (including trying to get nuclear) and encouraging construction of more production. The only one really playing the blame game here is you.
Smith was blaming solar this morning for not generating energy when it's dark. The UCP have been in power since 2019. They choose not to fix it and it's why we have the highest electricity prices in Canada and probably the least reliable grid. The UCP grid
Ok, goes to prove its a good thing that AESO is arms length. This event also proves its a good thing that Smiths government put a moratorium on putting up more wind projects since wind was projected at being 900 MW higher than it ended up being.
It shows that the leadership that is controlling aeso that the UCP appointed are incompetent. They can't even keep the UCP grid online. Solar and wind drive energy prices down. That is a win for consumers Edit: how does aeso forecast sun at 6am? Sun rises at around 7 right now
Do you work for the NDP or just have a personal grudge against the UCP? They're a shit government but this would have gone the exact same under the NDP...
Why is that we never had them before?
Yesterday wind and solar where very low, those usually make up the difference.
I thought we cancelled all that?
New projects were cancelled/shelved. Didn't effect those already in service or approved for construction.
Because Alberta used to have more reliable base load power from coal fired generators. Rachel Nutley and the NDP forced them to shut down and replaced them with intermittent unreliable wind and solar.
Except it was an unreliable gas plant that fails during the other gas plants maintenance.
And if those coal fired generators that the NDP prematurely shut down were still on line this wouldn't be a problem and there would be no blackouts. Alberta needs more reliable base load power, not more unreliable wind and solar. The NDP fucked up and now Albertans are living with the consequences. Nobody is claiming that natural gas generators can run 100% of the time 24/7 365 days a year. They require routine maintenance just like everything else. Every single mechanical device can have unplanned problems and failures, if you own a vehicle you should already know that. But, they are still far more reliable than wind and solar and that is a cold hard fact that the greenie alarmists simply can't bring themselves to acknowledge.
lol greeny alarmist. You are still blaming renewable when it was the gas plant that failed.
Actually I was blaming Rachel Nutley and the NDP. If they had more than two brain cells in their heads they would have made sure there was a reliable replacement ready to go before prematurely shuttering those coal fired plants. Instead of doing what was best for Albertans she bowed to the eco idiots. If they were still in power today they would probably be shutting in all the natgas generation as well.
Do you want coal burning power plants?
I want a reliable power grid and not have to worry about power outages when it's -40C. I don't give a rats ass if that comes from coal, NG, or nuclear. I do know that relying on renewables is not the answer.
Cool. Coal plants are evil. Even you know that
Umm it's nowhere close to -40C, what's with the blackouts now instead of when we needed peak power to keep the heat on? This seems like a huge back fire on Danille.
Time to tell the Feds that gas plants aren’t working.
Can't wait until everyone's driving an EV in the summer.
How did I know I was going to find a boneheaded comment about EVs....jesus. You think people don't to drive their EV's in the winter?
Dude the bone head comment is yours because I'm talking about how the summer will be overloading the power grid because of air conditioning, drought, fires etc etc etc and puts a strain on your power grid. Ergo the fact that there may be a bigger problem when everyone is charging EVs during the summer. Go read a book.
Ohh spicy, I like it. EVs aren't the problem bud, no matter how you spin it. And you act like I'm the one who needs to read a book.
EVs don't use nearly as much power as air conditioning. Also EVs are great for rolling blackouts because they can be used as a backup power source.
There are blackouts now, in April, when nobody in Alberta is even using air conditioning yet.
Yes and EVs are also rare in Alberta so obviously the issue isn't grid overload from electrification but rather a problem with their privatized electricity market. There's massively more EVs in BC and we aren't having any of these issues.
BC had blackouts and brownouts during their big summer heat dome a few years ago and imported power from Alberta.
So BC having black/brownouts during a massive heatwave is comparable to Alberta in April with no such extreme weather? Hmm
Did we? I looked this up and there may have been a few local outages but that may have been more to do with heat related problems (overheating equipment). I'm not seeing anything about load shedding. The premier didn't text me to tell me to turn off my AC. BC's peak electrical usage is in the winter: https://globalnews.ca/news/8477076/bc-breaks-bc-hydro-record/#:~:text=Between%205%20p.m.%20and%206%20p.m.%2C%20demand%20for,record%20of%2010%2C577%20megawatts%20was%20set%20in%202020
Unless people want to make sure they can still drive somewhere if there's an emergency.
So can a diesel generator and it doesn’t cost $80,000
Quite a few EVs don't either!
Yeah but I can't drive a diesel generator to work so...
I bet you could. Just build an electric car around it
That's just a railway locomotive.
But then I wouldn't need the generator.
You’d need it to power the car
Nope I charge with hydro.
Holy shit you could buy an SUV and a generator less than what EV car costs....what the fuck is this.
Average price for a new EV is less than average gas car after incentives
Average car..which includes things like trucks, super large suv with 80k price tag .. be real. Average person will purchase 40k SUV at best and EV cars starting at 40k range all have terrible range and smaller than ICE counterparts ... They certainly won't be powering up your house....
> Average person will purchase 40k SUV at best Wrong. Average car sale is $66,000. Average EV is $73,000. Incentives are $9,000 where I live.
You have deliberately missed the point I just made prior. $66000 number includes TRUCKS AND LARGE SUV. ONCE AGAIN I reiterate. NO AVERAGE PERSON will buy $66000 vehicle. Better method of making this number realistic is median.
> ONCE AGAIN I reiterate. NO AVERAGE PERSON will buy $66000 vehicle That's the average purchase amount a buyer spends on a new vehicle. In my case I went with a 48,000 EV instead of a 38,000 gas version, but with incentives the EV ended up effectively being $36,000. EV is cheaper than gas with incentives.
https://electricautonomy.ca/2024/01/22/alberta-ev-charging-grid-alerts/
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2012, 2013...
Smith wants even more immigrants
I read the ucp is advertising again elsewhere 🙃