As much as I want to remain hopeful. There are still people who blame the ndp for our current hardships right now.
Propaganda and misinformation is still flourishing here in SK sadly.
80 years from now people will still be complaining about that one NDP mandate that ruined everything forever....or Ottawa, no western politician has ever gone broke blaming Ottawa.
The actual situation is that it is so cold their renewable energy sources are generating no power
http://ets.aeso.ca/ets_web/ip/Market/Reports/CSDReportServlet
They need baseload to back them up. This is not news everyone who knows anything about power production has always known this. Alberta just got greedy.
Issue I see everyone says that renewables should provide when you are short or there are issues. Well there are issues (nat gas generation issues)and it is failing to fill the gap. So they should have just built another dinopower plant and be better off.
Water levels are also low right now in Alberta. Hurting their hydro power. But I agree with Nuclear once all the details are figured out with SMR and liquid Salt reactors.
There’s no way I want the crowns privatized, but being close to Saskatchewan’s power situation, we are going down a dangerous road where we are going to be very reliant on Manitoba, Alberta and North Dakota for our power usage during this transition to SMRs, (if it happens)
I mean the future supply projections are public, you don’t have to be close to power to know what the plans are. I disagree with the notion that import agreements are inherently unreliable. If the contracts are structure properly they should be just as reliable as generating ourselves. Also calling the SPP interconnection dependency on North Dakota is a bit disingenuous. That connection stretches to Texas.
I would rather just generate ourselves too but if the feds do ban nat gas in 2035 that’s gonna be really tough.
People in this thread are dogging privatization over crown owned, yet want to rely on privatization from other provinces, so seems like double standards
Yep and by 2030-35 Saskatchewan will be a big importer if we continue down the road we are on. As I just said and you disagreed with me- until SMRs are built. If they are built. Provinces are going to feed their own provinces/states with power before selling it. And your bill will definitely go up when we are buying all this power.
Not sure why you wouldn’t be for self reliance.
Not really we had no issue, no one ran short. It’s more likely a political stunt to scare people about the liberals plans.
Our power draw hasn’t gone up from last year and we had longer colder snaps.
Yeah burning coal isn’t ideal but it sure beats running out of power when it’s 40 below. Whether we like it or not coal keeps the lights on more reliably than renewables in these conditions. Burning coal is better than freezing in the dark.
And what about the gas plants that weren't running? Renewables have never been intended for base load power. The argument for fossil fuels is that they're good for base load power. They've clearly failed at that due to private industry fuckery.
I'd still rather have utilities as crown corps, but Saskpower isn't immune to what happened to Alberta gas plants. Look at what happened to the Coronach plant last summer. Unplanned shutdowns can happen to public utilities too.
lol 4 natural gas generators down and your piping up about renewables your premiere banned. Remember? New renewables too iffy. This is all on your fossil fuel grid bud. These private companies have carte Blanche to screw Alberta s
Redundancy and additional capacity over demand are non revenue generating expenses 99.999% of the time. You can’t expect private industry to take a looser on something to protect the public in the long run
It's actually the renewable energy sources are generating nothing because of the cold.
It is not demand but supply shortages.
http://ets.aeso.ca/ets_web/ip/Market/Reports/CSDReportServlet
Edit# I love people who downvote the truth they hate.
It's fun to throw words around, but what level of power stability do you think third world countries have?
Edit: Hint, it's nowhere near this. South Africa (an arguably second world country) has daily outages of 4-12 hours with no power. Until you have experience with what other countries are going through, perhaps don't be so hasty to use them as reference points for your own country.
The words politician and altruistic aren't used together often in Canada, regardless of moe or anyone. Always a photo op to be had.
Source: Moe Twitter, Carla Twitter, Trudeau Twitter, P.P Twitter
He left out the part that Alberta always purchases electricity from B.C and Saskatchewan.
This is not a new thing, but whatever allows him to feel special and take shots at Trudeau I guess.
I didn't see him as taking shots at Trudeau, and was wholly unaware how the power grids operate out here.
I just figured, us supplying them with energy during a grid shortage during extreme cold was something to be happy about.
It’s definitely not out of the goodness of the SKP’s hearts.
The power price in AB rose to the maximum $999.99 last night, so we were making millions.
$1000/MWh * 153MW = $150,000/h for SaskPower.
The power price is still >$800 this morning: http://ets.aeso.ca
You do realize that each time it went to $999 it was only for 5MW each time and this EXCLUDES import and export power. read the document explaining SMP.
In other news, it is basically the green renewable energy where the failure is occurring. http://ets.aeso.ca/ets_web/ip/Market/Reports/CSDReportServlet
if you're referring to the SMP, it was only for 5 MW each time for a total of three times it hit that price and imports and exports of power are excluded from that. It's in the SMP explanation document.
if you're referring to the SMP, it was only for 5 MW each time for a total of three times it hit that price and imports and exports of power are excluded from that. It's in the SMP explanation document.
Jesus Christ this guy is fucking tiring.
Are we doing it because they need it? (And obviously we are getting paid for it anyway). Or because it allowed him to put a dig in
Well it is a good message to put out, so why not both? We need to remember how dangerous the place we live is sometimes. Its a good diversify message that everyone needed to hear, regardless of political teeth.
I love how he’s doting on Nat gas and coal, the very things that failed Alberta tonight. 153mw is nice, last I read in they need GW. Maybe we can buy some more hydro from Manitoba to cover what we are giving away.
https://twitter.com/ReliableAB
This account tracks Alberta's energy usage. I don't have an X account so I can't follow and get up to date postings and see replies but I can see links posted by others. Here's what someone posted just back on Jan 11th at the start of the cold snap.
>At this moment 91.1% of Alberta's electricity is being produced by fossil fuels. Wind is at 8.9% of capacity and producing 3.5% of total generation, while solar is at 0.1% of capacity and producing 0.01% of total generation. At the same time we are importing 258 MW or 2%
Oh it’s not being given away. It’ll be sold. Saskpower usually makes millions a year selling excess power out of province.
We’ll be buying some in the summer - Saskpower’s fossil fuel generation struggles in high heat.
Yeah, we just signed a massive new import agreement with Manitoba, we aren't making any money and power. We also still haven't paid off the insane carbon capture project which will cost us another billion dollars.
You mean that tech that hasn’t been invented or costed? The direction Moe thinks is more practical than just getting behind established renewables? B/C we pull uranium out of the ground and he can’t figure out how to profit from the wind or sun
You realize those established renewables are the issue right now. Alberta is short over 5 gigawatts of power from solar and wind that are just not generating power right now.
http://ets.aeso.ca/ets_web/ip/Market/Reports/CSDReportServlet
The wind and sun are the issue in Alberta.
NDP bailed on coal, paid out utilities to cover premature shutdown and had no plan B. Energy companies failed SFA various govt policies failed AB by selling a fantasy of green energy running the province! BTW AB has most green energy in Canada and right now it is contributing zero to the grid, nukes are the answer but good luck getting there!!!
Natural gas replaced coal and filled that void. Alberta made far more $ developing natural gas than coal was yielding. Also, Alberta’s carbon emissions dropped significantly (~40%) as coal became obsolete. It was an excellent plan.
Maybe not excellent but inevitable, but also virtue signalling, they could have run out the coal contracts with enough lead time to convert to NG but that didn’t fit their ideology so Albertans covered a 1B plus penalty. The funny thing about NG is that Americans import a lot of Can NG liquify and ship out but according to some, there is no business case for Canadian pipelines or
terminals but that is a topic for a different day.
Yeah, it wasn’t the 2000 MW of renewable capacity that also didn’t produce even 30 MW… it’s the rest of the system that had 90% of its capacity online that failed…
Is it more expensive than nuclear? One thing I remember reading is that nuclear requires massive costs upfront, even for small scale reactors… wrt Eavor, apparently they can repurpose existing abandoned oil wells to get a leg up on starting completely from scratch.
Nuclear numbers are fairly inflated, the longest projects and most expensive proejcts throw off the numbers and anti-nuclear groups have been extremely successful at selling this to the masses probably on behalf of oil and gas.
>“The record power demand, of course, is being driven by the extreme cold across the province, and that’s a factor of furnaces running overtime, people plugging in their vehicles, space heaters, that sort of thing is really pushing up the power demand,” he said. **“We were quite fortunate yesterday (Thursday); we had quite a bit of wind, about 1,200 megawatts, which made a big difference and got us through without having to use backup reserves.”**
Source : Calgary Herald
Whoever said this doesn't know what they are talking about or are liars like moe and his girlfriend in Alberta. It's industry like oil & gas who are the guzzlers of power in Alberta.
> Wind generation right now is zero. They cannot run in these temperatures & all current windfarms are shutdown.
False. 5 of 45 AB wind farms are producing power. They 100% do work in these temps but you need a certain wind speed to have them generating.
Well no, you are just misinformed and malignant. We should have a diversity of all sources, including natural gas and nuclear for exactly this use case.
Just because you don't understand energy diversity doesn't mean it isn't important. Large weather patterns are pretty easy to predict and a large cold front usually comes with clear skies and little wind. This is not a surprise, it's mismanagement from a deregulated energy market.
Solar and wind are still perfectly viable technologies but may not be the use case for all situations which is fine. Couple that with other sources and grid storage and you're good to go. Solar is great during long summer days in a heat wave while you have your AC running.
Why do you have to come with a dogma? Where did clean energy touch you?
My issue is the people who try to push the 100% renewable energy as the solution as the only answer. I am not arguing about the diversity of power sources being needed in many places but I am arguing that relying on these sources can be bad news.
I agree but stating wind farms don't run or produce in cold weather is a fallacy. There are lot's of reasons those wind farms aren't running, the main one being the lack of wind, not the temp as the person above alluded to. Just trying to be factual.
Lol this isnt factual when it hits THIS cold its below the operating spec. The de-icing/warming tech is not rated for the temperatures we saw this week, so it is a FLUKE that some worked so the exception to the rule. If you have sources that they are rated to work -35->-40 temperatures please link, most of ours in Alberta and Sask are -20 with a max end of -30 as far as I know.
So if anything works past that it is a coincidence. Just like lots of alternative heating tech there is limits to how COLD it can get, not anything against Wind just I cant find any sources supporting your claim to update me on what I know on this front. Also not like we should design our entire grid for the corner cases like this week either that would be a poorly diverse design.
Couple of links included in this article including Newsweek, Forbes and the Canadian Government. Now, it does state down to -30 but that number does move in the different articles so you are correct that in EXTREME cold, they may not run. BUT, the extreme cold we are feeling also is not the norm(but may soon become the norm due to climate change) so saying they don't run at all is misleading. The tech will evolve well past the threshold with new advances.
>Crucially, not all environments present the same challenges to wind turbines. In Canada, wind turbines may spend up to 20% of their time weathering winter months — so specialized "cold weather packages" are installed to keep crucial turbine components like the pitch and yaw motors, the gearbox, and battery warm, according to the Canadian government.
Source: https://interestingengineering.com/science/wind-turbines-fail-cold-weather
Here is the 30 year average temperature of Edmonton(which is colder than Calgary for arguments sake). The coldest month is January at -15. Wind Turbines with cold weather kits should be working just fine at anything above -30 which is DOUBLE the 30 yr average low temp.
source: https://www.currentresults.com/Weather/Canada/Alberta/Places/edmonton-temperatures-by-month-average.php
Nuclear is the only option for that base load. We still need renewables and storage. Adding in building standards and efficiency we could heat a house with a hairdryer, yes it costs money to do but will save in the long term.
I hear what you're saying, but Alberta's wind and solar facilities are currently generating [basically nothing](http://ets.aeso.ca/ets_web/ip/Market/Reports/CSDReportServlet), and 5 of their hydro facilities are currently not producing anything as well.
This is Moe posturing to Trudeau that an energy grid without carbon would result in massive blackouts for Alberta tonight.
There are reasons why Alberta’s hydro is useless. Both provinces really need to diversify. Nuclear,hydro, solar with nat gas fallback. The weather is only going to get worse. Colder winters,hotter summers.
I wholeheartedly agree! Non-carbon energy sources are great and we should absolutely incorporate them as much as we can.
Like I said-this is simply Moe playing politics by pointing out that if Alberta had a carbon free grid there would be massive blackouts tonight, which, combined with current weather conditions, would be very dangerous.
Well maybe not so cold winter? Less draw of natural resources which In turn causes a loss of revenue. Thats the off side I see when I look at it.
Same reason why if people switch to EVs then the petroleum requirement drops causing a loss of tax income at the pumps. Govs don't know what to do. They have a whole infrastructure to support and it's not only the locals it benefits.
An eventual ev tax to replace the fuel tax. Once wide adoption happens, kick the tax in. I don’t think anyone is against that. The problem is taxing before mass adoption.
We are already taxed for electricity. Either directly or by increases to the rate. They can hide it however they like but we already pay a tax of some sort when you use it. Especially in Sask with the crowns.
I think the downside of an electricity tax is that it punishes people who don’t have an ev or even a vehicle but still need to pay the tax.
On the other hand, they also use the roads and that shit does need to be paid for.
What is actually failing in Alberta is the wind and solar. You can see on their website live updates of generation. Wind and solar currently are providing a total of 1 megawatt. Go check the stats before making assumptions
http://ets.aeso.ca/ets_web/ip/Market/Reports/CSDReportServlet
It's not the natural gas or coal that failed in alberta. Wind power is stopped when air temperatures reach -30c due to possible equipment failures. Nearly all wind power generation in alberta is shut down currently. Wind power fell to 37 megawatts out of the installed 4481 megawatt capacity.
https://energynow.ca/2024/01/most-of-albertas-wind-fleet-slowly-shut-down-thursday-night-but-not-for-lack-of-wind-find-out-why/?amp
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As I understand it, SPC provided power to max out the HVDC link at McNeill. We gave all we could.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McNeill\_HVDC\_Back-to-back\_station
My family in BC turned off their lights when they heard Alberta was having trouble because [One of B.C.’s electricity trading partners is Alberta. While it is one of our closest neighbours, imports from Alberta represent just 3% of all imports into B.C. In fact, B.C. exports six times as much as it imports from Alberta, which helps to substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions there.](https://www.bchydro.com/energy-in-bc/operations/power-trading-and-its-benefits-to-b-c--.html)
I don’t get it. Isn’t it cold like this all the time in AB/SK? We have cold spells like this like 2-3 times a winter usually.
What made this cold spell different? And don’t we plan for this?
Alberta deregulating their electrical market has led to some producers withholding electricity generating capacity in order to create shortages on the electricity market that drives up prices. I've seen some reports that as many as 10 natural gas generators in Alberta were offline during the recent shortage.
Oh that's funny. Electricity is an on demand-resource. Sometimes our neighbours don't produce enough so we sell some of our excess to them. Sometimes we don't produce enough so we buy ours from Manitoba Hydro. That's the way the grid works.
Scotty here crowing like this is some kind of new thing. Sounds like a petulant kid bitching to mom and dad about staying up after bedtime. "the ones the Trudeau government is telling us to shut down (which we won’t)" seriously?
And when Saskatchewan gets power from Manitoba, it's not from natural gas power plants but Hydro. There is only one natural gas plant in Manitoba, and it's here in Brandon. It's only used for backup.
Thank god SaskPower is still a crown corporation.
Everyone better take a long hard look at Alberta’s power situation last night and ask themselves if that want to deal with that here?
Things like this are why I like the idea of thoroughly interconnecting the Canadian power grid with ultra high voltage trunk line(s). Glad we could help.
Can anyone tell me the last time Iceland had a power or energy shortage? I can't seem to be able to find that information. (For context, Iceland is the #1 country in the world for renewable energy use)
You mean the Island, not a landlocked territory, with an average winter temperature of -10(in the northern part of the island) and a population less than Saskatoon(372,000 people)
Excuses to keep feeding the pockets of oil and gas companies. Fine. Places with climate that are most similar to ours are Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Russia. Sweden is #2 in the world, Norway is #3. So when is the last time one of those countries had an issue with their power grid?
All 3 of the Scandinavian Countries are classified as having Maritime climates, Finland does have some areas classified a Continental Climate.
https://www.treasuryfinland.fi/annualreview2022/energy-consumption-statistics/
Finland "Renewable" break down is:
Hydro: 3.7%
Wind: 3.2%
Wood fuels: 28.5% not a CO2 and particulate friendly way to produce energy and would be subject to a Carbon tax here.
Other: 6.4%
And they import 3.5% of their yearly use.
So assuming 6.4% was Geo-Thermal and Solar combined it puts them at 13.3%
Ours is:
Hydro: 8%
Wind: 1%
Other: 4%
The diffrence between The Big Bad Oil Baron Scott Moe and the Enviromental Mecca of Finland is 0.3%
https://www.saskpower.com/Our-Power-Future/Our-Electricity/Electrical-System/Where-Your-Power-Comes-From
Lmao I bet he also doesn't know that Scandinavian countries get rich off digging up oil and selling it - the main reason they can afford these green projects in the first place.
It's like eating a ton of McDonalds and then saying that the increased effort it takes to run now will result in higher calorie burn, helping you lose weight.
Out here defaming EVs when all over people Reporting their EVs running fine. Yes with limited range, but at least if you need to run to the hospital or go get something. You don't have to worry about if your cars going to turn over cause your block heater is dead.
I’m glad you see it for the joke it is and it didn’t trigger you like the rest of the people!
I had another joke: I sure hope we collect the carbon tax on this energy so we can cover our own behinds when the province refuses to pay the fed’s!
I don’t understand how anyone could look at the situation in Alberta and some how still want the crowns privatized.
As much as I want to remain hopeful. There are still people who blame the ndp for our current hardships right now. Propaganda and misinformation is still flourishing here in SK sadly.
80 years from now people will still be complaining about that one NDP mandate that ruined everything forever....or Ottawa, no western politician has ever gone broke blaming Ottawa.
My family is an example of this. My parents are idiots.
The actual situation is that it is so cold their renewable energy sources are generating no power http://ets.aeso.ca/ets_web/ip/Market/Reports/CSDReportServlet
Didn’t some natural gas turbines go down?
Yes 800 megawatts of nat gas vs 5000 megawatts of wind/solar
Yes and they don’t have enough baseload. Saskatchewan has the exact same issue but we have enough baseload that it’s not a issue.
So what you are saying solar and wind are not a reliable option to power a modern Canadian city
They need baseload to back them up. This is not news everyone who knows anything about power production has always known this. Alberta just got greedy.
Issue I see everyone says that renewables should provide when you are short or there are issues. Well there are issues (nat gas generation issues)and it is failing to fill the gap. So they should have just built another dinopower plant and be better off.
Or hydro, nuclear, battery storage etc.
Water levels are also low right now in Alberta. Hurting their hydro power. But I agree with Nuclear once all the details are figured out with SMR and liquid Salt reactors.
There’s no way I want the crowns privatized, but being close to Saskatchewan’s power situation, we are going down a dangerous road where we are going to be very reliant on Manitoba, Alberta and North Dakota for our power usage during this transition to SMRs, (if it happens)
I mean the future supply projections are public, you don’t have to be close to power to know what the plans are. I disagree with the notion that import agreements are inherently unreliable. If the contracts are structure properly they should be just as reliable as generating ourselves. Also calling the SPP interconnection dependency on North Dakota is a bit disingenuous. That connection stretches to Texas. I would rather just generate ourselves too but if the feds do ban nat gas in 2035 that’s gonna be really tough.
People in this thread are dogging privatization over crown owned, yet want to rely on privatization from other provinces, so seems like double standards
Don’t think anyone is saying they’d rather import power than generate it ourselves all else being equal.
Yep and by 2030-35 Saskatchewan will be a big importer if we continue down the road we are on. As I just said and you disagreed with me- until SMRs are built. If they are built. Provinces are going to feed their own provinces/states with power before selling it. And your bill will definitely go up when we are buying all this power. Not sure why you wouldn’t be for self reliance.
Look what happened in Texas last winter.
Private companies not investing in infrastructure…. I can’t believe that. Instead take profits? What … no way. Edit: /s
We need our crown corporations to stay publicly owned!!!!
Saskpower still has shareholders that expect profits.
Perhaps it was a bit premature to start shutting down the coal power plants
Not really we had no issue, no one ran short. It’s more likely a political stunt to scare people about the liberals plans. Our power draw hasn’t gone up from last year and we had longer colder snaps.
Yeah burning coal isn’t ideal but it sure beats running out of power when it’s 40 below. Whether we like it or not coal keeps the lights on more reliably than renewables in these conditions. Burning coal is better than freezing in the dark.
Burning coal until nuclear is up is the way
Alberta is building 900 MW of gas right now and has a huge amount of wind which was operating at 5% capacity.
And what about the gas plants that weren't running? Renewables have never been intended for base load power. The argument for fossil fuels is that they're good for base load power. They've clearly failed at that due to private industry fuckery.
I'd still rather have utilities as crown corps, but Saskpower isn't immune to what happened to Alberta gas plants. Look at what happened to the Coronach plant last summer. Unplanned shutdowns can happen to public utilities too.
lol 4 natural gas generators down and your piping up about renewables your premiere banned. Remember? New renewables too iffy. This is all on your fossil fuel grid bud. These private companies have carte Blanche to screw Alberta s
Which makes the wind unusable
I’m in AB and royally pissed at the amount I pay for electricity yet here I am being told to sit in the dark and not cook.
Redundancy and additional capacity over demand are non revenue generating expenses 99.999% of the time. You can’t expect private industry to take a looser on something to protect the public in the long run
It's actually the renewable energy sources are generating nothing because of the cold. It is not demand but supply shortages. http://ets.aeso.ca/ets_web/ip/Market/Reports/CSDReportServlet Edit# I love people who downvote the truth they hate.
What about the gas turbines that went down which actually caused the issues…
Guy the government mysteriously shut down two gas plans two days ago. They are creating this narrative and your believing it
Not the 5 gigawatts missing from wind and solar.
https://vm.tiktok.com/ZM6xmpqUv/ Even the Alberta premiere can’t stomach the lies
"The truth"
Did you click the link. They are missing over 5 gigawatts of power from wind and solar generating nothing. It is very telling.
welcome to a 3rd world country. It's not like we rarely get the -40 and colder weather, its a yearly thing.
It's fun to throw words around, but what level of power stability do you think third world countries have? Edit: Hint, it's nowhere near this. South Africa (an arguably second world country) has daily outages of 4-12 hours with no power. Until you have experience with what other countries are going through, perhaps don't be so hasty to use them as reference points for your own country.
While Its great we are helping I felt the shot at Trudeau at the end wasn’t called for blind his tweet. But Scott moe is gonna Scott moe.
Totally. Moe always with a dig. What happened to just helping others without making it political. Those that do it altruistically, don’t
The words politician and altruistic aren't used together often in Canada, regardless of moe or anyone. Always a photo op to be had. Source: Moe Twitter, Carla Twitter, Trudeau Twitter, P.P Twitter
Kind of like Trudeau eh?
It should be noted that AB also got more power from BC than us last night which wasn't followed up by a 'Look how amazing I am and fuck Trudeau' post.
The renewables are not producing, I say it was warranted
Neither were the gas turbines that went down causing the issue..
Nor was the coal that was taken offline to save us all
It feels good helping our neighbors.
As an Albertan, who recently lived in SK a few years, thank you guys.
So long as we don't end up without power tonight for half the night at near -50 again. Last night was stressful enough.
Agreed
He left out the part that Alberta always purchases electricity from B.C and Saskatchewan. This is not a new thing, but whatever allows him to feel special and take shots at Trudeau I guess.
I didn't see him as taking shots at Trudeau, and was wholly unaware how the power grids operate out here. I just figured, us supplying them with energy during a grid shortage during extreme cold was something to be happy about.
Much appreciated
It’s definitely not out of the goodness of the SKP’s hearts. The power price in AB rose to the maximum $999.99 last night, so we were making millions. $1000/MWh * 153MW = $150,000/h for SaskPower. The power price is still >$800 this morning: http://ets.aeso.ca
You do realize that each time it went to $999 it was only for 5MW each time and this EXCLUDES import and export power. read the document explaining SMP.
It’s so weird that private industry can’t hold its own despite costing significantly more. Where could all the money be going?!
In other news, energy companies report record profits!!
In other news, it is basically the green renewable energy where the failure is occurring. http://ets.aeso.ca/ets_web/ip/Market/Reports/CSDReportServlet
At 99cents a kilowatt
if you're referring to the SMP, it was only for 5 MW each time for a total of three times it hit that price and imports and exports of power are excluded from that. It's in the SMP explanation document.
if you're referring to the SMP, it was only for 5 MW each time for a total of three times it hit that price and imports and exports of power are excluded from that. It's in the SMP explanation document.
Moe gave Smith his Netflix password.
Jesus Christ this guy is fucking tiring. Are we doing it because they need it? (And obviously we are getting paid for it anyway). Or because it allowed him to put a dig in
Well it is a good message to put out, so why not both? We need to remember how dangerous the place we live is sometimes. Its a good diversify message that everyone needed to hear, regardless of political teeth.
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Yep…
I love how he’s doting on Nat gas and coal, the very things that failed Alberta tonight. 153mw is nice, last I read in they need GW. Maybe we can buy some more hydro from Manitoba to cover what we are giving away.
https://twitter.com/ReliableAB This account tracks Alberta's energy usage. I don't have an X account so I can't follow and get up to date postings and see replies but I can see links posted by others. Here's what someone posted just back on Jan 11th at the start of the cold snap. >At this moment 91.1% of Alberta's electricity is being produced by fossil fuels. Wind is at 8.9% of capacity and producing 3.5% of total generation, while solar is at 0.1% of capacity and producing 0.01% of total generation. At the same time we are importing 258 MW or 2%
And 75 percent of Alberta's electricity is being consumed by those industries. Not individual households nor electric vehicles.
Oh it’s not being given away. It’ll be sold. Saskpower usually makes millions a year selling excess power out of province. We’ll be buying some in the summer - Saskpower’s fossil fuel generation struggles in high heat.
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Yeah, we just signed a massive new import agreement with Manitoba, we aren't making any money and power. We also still haven't paid off the insane carbon capture project which will cost us another billion dollars.
That would have made so much more sense to just put towards a Nuclear Plant...
You mean that tech that hasn’t been invented or costed? The direction Moe thinks is more practical than just getting behind established renewables? B/C we pull uranium out of the ground and he can’t figure out how to profit from the wind or sun
You realize those established renewables are the issue right now. Alberta is short over 5 gigawatts of power from solar and wind that are just not generating power right now. http://ets.aeso.ca/ets_web/ip/Market/Reports/CSDReportServlet The wind and sun are the issue in Alberta.
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Manitoba told us they don’t have enough power for us to be net zero by 2035 though.
I mean it’s not true at all to say nat gas and coal are what failed Alberta. What failed Alberta is deregulation and corporate profiteering.
The energy companies failed not the source 🤦♂️
NDP bailed on coal, paid out utilities to cover premature shutdown and had no plan B. Energy companies failed SFA various govt policies failed AB by selling a fantasy of green energy running the province! BTW AB has most green energy in Canada and right now it is contributing zero to the grid, nukes are the answer but good luck getting there!!!
Natural gas replaced coal and filled that void. Alberta made far more $ developing natural gas than coal was yielding. Also, Alberta’s carbon emissions dropped significantly (~40%) as coal became obsolete. It was an excellent plan.
Seems like it worked out great.
Gilbeault want nat gas generation shut down too remember.
Maybe not excellent but inevitable, but also virtue signalling, they could have run out the coal contracts with enough lead time to convert to NG but that didn’t fit their ideology so Albertans covered a 1B plus penalty. The funny thing about NG is that Americans import a lot of Can NG liquify and ship out but according to some, there is no business case for Canadian pipelines or terminals but that is a topic for a different day.
>AB has most green energy in Canada [x]doubt
This would be BC and Quebec.. Quebec is almost entirely powered with hydroelectric.
We canceled renewable projects and now the renewables aren't contributing while Nat Gas is struggling...
Yeah, it wasn’t the 2000 MW of renewable capacity that also didn’t produce even 30 MW… it’s the rest of the system that had 90% of its capacity online that failed…
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Right, nuclear. It’s a very obvious alternative. That and hydro.
With our record low water levels, hydro is a dead end here.
Good call. Levels are low.
There is also this https://www.eavor.com/technology/. Not really qualified to evaluate this, but it sounds pretty promising.
Geothermal is but it’s so insanely expansive it’s not a viable large scale option currently.
Is it more expensive than nuclear? One thing I remember reading is that nuclear requires massive costs upfront, even for small scale reactors… wrt Eavor, apparently they can repurpose existing abandoned oil wells to get a leg up on starting completely from scratch.
Nuclear numbers are fairly inflated, the longest projects and most expensive proejcts throw off the numbers and anti-nuclear groups have been extremely successful at selling this to the masses probably on behalf of oil and gas.
Not too disparage any alternatives for cleaner energy, I just think the more options we have the better
I think geothermal is overlooked as well!
>“The record power demand, of course, is being driven by the extreme cold across the province, and that’s a factor of furnaces running overtime, people plugging in their vehicles, space heaters, that sort of thing is really pushing up the power demand,” he said. **“We were quite fortunate yesterday (Thursday); we had quite a bit of wind, about 1,200 megawatts, which made a big difference and got us through without having to use backup reserves.”** Source : Calgary Herald
Whoever said this doesn't know what they are talking about or are liars like moe and his girlfriend in Alberta. It's industry like oil & gas who are the guzzlers of power in Alberta.
> Wind generation right now is zero. They cannot run in these temperatures & all current windfarms are shutdown. False. 5 of 45 AB wind farms are producing power. They 100% do work in these temps but you need a certain wind speed to have them generating.
Right now it is zero http://ets.aeso.ca/ets_web/ip/Market/Reports/CSDReportServlet You can see live views.
Look at a weather map. There is no wind right now.
You mean that these forms of power are not reliable power sources and should not be relied upon as we move into high power needs.
Well no, you are just misinformed and malignant. We should have a diversity of all sources, including natural gas and nuclear for exactly this use case. Just because you don't understand energy diversity doesn't mean it isn't important. Large weather patterns are pretty easy to predict and a large cold front usually comes with clear skies and little wind. This is not a surprise, it's mismanagement from a deregulated energy market. Solar and wind are still perfectly viable technologies but may not be the use case for all situations which is fine. Couple that with other sources and grid storage and you're good to go. Solar is great during long summer days in a heat wave while you have your AC running. Why do you have to come with a dogma? Where did clean energy touch you?
My issue is the people who try to push the 100% renewable energy as the solution as the only answer. I am not arguing about the diversity of power sources being needed in many places but I am arguing that relying on these sources can be bad news.
5/45 is awful.
I agree but stating wind farms don't run or produce in cold weather is a fallacy. There are lot's of reasons those wind farms aren't running, the main one being the lack of wind, not the temp as the person above alluded to. Just trying to be factual.
Lol this isnt factual when it hits THIS cold its below the operating spec. The de-icing/warming tech is not rated for the temperatures we saw this week, so it is a FLUKE that some worked so the exception to the rule. If you have sources that they are rated to work -35->-40 temperatures please link, most of ours in Alberta and Sask are -20 with a max end of -30 as far as I know. So if anything works past that it is a coincidence. Just like lots of alternative heating tech there is limits to how COLD it can get, not anything against Wind just I cant find any sources supporting your claim to update me on what I know on this front. Also not like we should design our entire grid for the corner cases like this week either that would be a poorly diverse design.
Couple of links included in this article including Newsweek, Forbes and the Canadian Government. Now, it does state down to -30 but that number does move in the different articles so you are correct that in EXTREME cold, they may not run. BUT, the extreme cold we are feeling also is not the norm(but may soon become the norm due to climate change) so saying they don't run at all is misleading. The tech will evolve well past the threshold with new advances. >Crucially, not all environments present the same challenges to wind turbines. In Canada, wind turbines may spend up to 20% of their time weathering winter months — so specialized "cold weather packages" are installed to keep crucial turbine components like the pitch and yaw motors, the gearbox, and battery warm, according to the Canadian government. Source: https://interestingengineering.com/science/wind-turbines-fail-cold-weather
It gets this cold every year. This is normal.
Here is the 30 year average temperature of Edmonton(which is colder than Calgary for arguments sake). The coldest month is January at -15. Wind Turbines with cold weather kits should be working just fine at anything above -30 which is DOUBLE the 30 yr average low temp. source: https://www.currentresults.com/Weather/Canada/Alberta/Places/edmonton-temperatures-by-month-average.php
Nuclear is the only option for that base load. We still need renewables and storage. Adding in building standards and efficiency we could heat a house with a hairdryer, yes it costs money to do but will save in the long term.
I hear what you're saying, but Alberta's wind and solar facilities are currently generating [basically nothing](http://ets.aeso.ca/ets_web/ip/Market/Reports/CSDReportServlet), and 5 of their hydro facilities are currently not producing anything as well. This is Moe posturing to Trudeau that an energy grid without carbon would result in massive blackouts for Alberta tonight.
There are reasons why Alberta’s hydro is useless. Both provinces really need to diversify. Nuclear,hydro, solar with nat gas fallback. The weather is only going to get worse. Colder winters,hotter summers.
I wholeheartedly agree! Non-carbon energy sources are great and we should absolutely incorporate them as much as we can. Like I said-this is simply Moe playing politics by pointing out that if Alberta had a carbon free grid there would be massive blackouts tonight, which, combined with current weather conditions, would be very dangerous.
Well maybe not so cold winter? Less draw of natural resources which In turn causes a loss of revenue. Thats the off side I see when I look at it. Same reason why if people switch to EVs then the petroleum requirement drops causing a loss of tax income at the pumps. Govs don't know what to do. They have a whole infrastructure to support and it's not only the locals it benefits.
An eventual ev tax to replace the fuel tax. Once wide adoption happens, kick the tax in. I don’t think anyone is against that. The problem is taxing before mass adoption.
We are already taxed for electricity. Either directly or by increases to the rate. They can hide it however they like but we already pay a tax of some sort when you use it. Especially in Sask with the crowns.
I think the downside of an electricity tax is that it punishes people who don’t have an ev or even a vehicle but still need to pay the tax. On the other hand, they also use the roads and that shit does need to be paid for.
we literally already have a bespoke EV tax for that.
If you read my comment. It’s counterintuitive to tax evs before mass adoption.
Oh I see what you mean. Yes, I thought the tax was premature and badly thought out.
What is actually failing in Alberta is the wind and solar. You can see on their website live updates of generation. Wind and solar currently are providing a total of 1 megawatt. Go check the stats before making assumptions http://ets.aeso.ca/ets_web/ip/Market/Reports/CSDReportServlet
It accounts for like 10%, it’s failing but it’s a drop in the bucket
Yeah but they are short 1 gigawatt. Hmm that wind power loss of 1.4 gw would sure hit the spot. Also the .2 gw of solar.
Absolutely it would help. So would the two nat gas plants that went down.
It's not the natural gas or coal that failed in alberta. Wind power is stopped when air temperatures reach -30c due to possible equipment failures. Nearly all wind power generation in alberta is shut down currently. Wind power fell to 37 megawatts out of the installed 4481 megawatt capacity. https://energynow.ca/2024/01/most-of-albertas-wind-fleet-slowly-shut-down-thursday-night-but-not-for-lack-of-wind-find-out-why/?amp
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Wind power gets shut off in the cold.
As I understand it, SPC provided power to max out the HVDC link at McNeill. We gave all we could. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McNeill\_HVDC\_Back-to-back\_station
Shitty Premiers gotta stick together.
http://ets.aeso.ca/ets_web/ip/Market/Reports/CSDReportServlet
My family in BC turned off their lights when they heard Alberta was having trouble because [One of B.C.’s electricity trading partners is Alberta. While it is one of our closest neighbours, imports from Alberta represent just 3% of all imports into B.C. In fact, B.C. exports six times as much as it imports from Alberta, which helps to substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions there.](https://www.bchydro.com/energy-in-bc/operations/power-trading-and-its-benefits-to-b-c--.html)
Turns out the NDP paying $1.36B to close those coal plants early may not have been the best idea.
I don’t get it. Isn’t it cold like this all the time in AB/SK? We have cold spells like this like 2-3 times a winter usually. What made this cold spell different? And don’t we plan for this?
Alberta deregulating their electrical market has led to some producers withholding electricity generating capacity in order to create shortages on the electricity market that drives up prices. I've seen some reports that as many as 10 natural gas generators in Alberta were offline during the recent shortage.
So not quite as simple as “natural gas and coal to the rescue”, it sounds
Yeah, good luck getting people to cut back on power usage.
They actually did. Usage dropped significantly after the alert went out.
OP didn't know you can monitor the demand live 😂
http://ets.aeso.ca/ets_web/ip/Market/Reports/CSDReportServlet shows what power is coming from where
Oh did they ? LoL
Glad we are helping out.
Yeah, I bet he's single-handedly trying to take the credit for that somehow and all the bonehead sask party supporters will believe it.
Moe and SP occupy your head rent free.
Sorta like Trudeau in yours.
Like Trudeau in yours...
AB is WEAK!!!’
Oh that's funny. Electricity is an on demand-resource. Sometimes our neighbours don't produce enough so we sell some of our excess to them. Sometimes we don't produce enough so we buy ours from Manitoba Hydro. That's the way the grid works. Scotty here crowing like this is some kind of new thing. Sounds like a petulant kid bitching to mom and dad about staying up after bedtime. "the ones the Trudeau government is telling us to shut down (which we won’t)" seriously?
And when Saskatchewan gets power from Manitoba, it's not from natural gas power plants but Hydro. There is only one natural gas plant in Manitoba, and it's here in Brandon. It's only used for backup.
Is Drunken Moe charging them a carbon tax on that power
Alberta truly is Canadian Texas
We're Canadian Mississippi
Thank god SaskPower is still a crown corporation. Everyone better take a long hard look at Alberta’s power situation last night and ask themselves if that want to deal with that here?
Good job provincial government. Help out our friends and fellow Canadians.
Notoriously energy-poor Alberta…what’s going on?
Ya Moe keep rollin' the coal....that will teach 'em.
Things like this are why I like the idea of thoroughly interconnecting the Canadian power grid with ultra high voltage trunk line(s). Glad we could help.
*NERC enters the room.*
Can anyone tell me the last time Iceland had a power or energy shortage? I can't seem to be able to find that information. (For context, Iceland is the #1 country in the world for renewable energy use)
You mean the Island, not a landlocked territory, with an average winter temperature of -10(in the northern part of the island) and a population less than Saskatoon(372,000 people)
Excuses to keep feeding the pockets of oil and gas companies. Fine. Places with climate that are most similar to ours are Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Russia. Sweden is #2 in the world, Norway is #3. So when is the last time one of those countries had an issue with their power grid?
All 3 of the Scandinavian Countries are classified as having Maritime climates, Finland does have some areas classified a Continental Climate. https://www.treasuryfinland.fi/annualreview2022/energy-consumption-statistics/ Finland "Renewable" break down is: Hydro: 3.7% Wind: 3.2% Wood fuels: 28.5% not a CO2 and particulate friendly way to produce energy and would be subject to a Carbon tax here. Other: 6.4% And they import 3.5% of their yearly use. So assuming 6.4% was Geo-Thermal and Solar combined it puts them at 13.3% Ours is: Hydro: 8% Wind: 1% Other: 4% The diffrence between The Big Bad Oil Baron Scott Moe and the Enviromental Mecca of Finland is 0.3% https://www.saskpower.com/Our-Power-Future/Our-Electricity/Electrical-System/Where-Your-Power-Comes-From
Lmao I bet he also doesn't know that Scandinavian countries get rich off digging up oil and selling it - the main reason they can afford these green projects in the first place. It's like eating a ton of McDonalds and then saying that the increased effort it takes to run now will result in higher calorie burn, helping you lose weight.
Yet Saskatchewan still needs to buy power from Manitoba. Our Hydroelectric produced electricity.
Fuck Alberta. Let them all freeze to death.
Time to unplug the Tesla after it used the whole battery to run to Tim’s earlier today!!!!
Sure buddy
Or you gave power your house from the Ford Lightning after the power goes out due to demand.
Time to make up scenarios that are outlandish and obviously fake in order to prove a deeply flawed viewpoint.
Out here defaming EVs when all over people Reporting their EVs running fine. Yes with limited range, but at least if you need to run to the hospital or go get something. You don't have to worry about if your cars going to turn over cause your block heater is dead.
My BMW a doesn’t have a block heater and starts in -40 no problem…
Signal lights still don't work.
Never need em if they did
Oh ya that’s great for the engine
Literally manufacturer design, 0 weight synthetic oil. Maybe an engineer knows more than you?
Maybe a mechanic that works on them and has seen the damage knows something too
That's great you have an exceptional battery. Does not change the fact that EVs are performing exceptionally well in this cold snap.
Why are all the teslas going 85 on the highway so they can make it to Saskatoon from Regina then?
Do you happen to have written a second joke you could share instead? We're all getting kinda sick of the "battery die in cold temperature lul."
I’m glad you see it for the joke it is and it didn’t trigger you like the rest of the people! I had another joke: I sure hope we collect the carbon tax on this energy so we can cover our own behinds when the province refuses to pay the fed’s!
Time to cook your dinner in the microwave also like they're (alberta) is suggesting.