And the warning lights are flashing after Alberta’s electricity grid barely avoided crashing on Monday, following a near perfect storm of high temperatures and low wind that forced the Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO) to issue a Level 3 power alert.
Add in repairs to the inter-tie with British Columbia and Albertans were relying almost exclusively on natural gas — supplemented with intermittent solar — to keep cool.
It ultimately saved the day.
And it could happen again on Tuesday, as the mercury climbs well into the 30Cs across much of Alberta. In a post on X, formerly Twitter, the AESO reminded Albertans to limit power use again today, between the peak hours of 4 and 7 pm.
“The AESO is asking people to reduce their electricity usage to balance out the system reliability and prevent more serious emergency measures.”
According to its website, those would include rotating power outages or so-called ‘brown outs’ as “the last option to maintain reliability.”
It comes amid a clamorous debate on the future of Alberta’s electricity grid — and Saskatchewan’s — after federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault’s proposed power rules that would force Alberta to shut down gas-fired power plants in favour of wind and solar by 2035.
In an exclusive interview with The Western Standard, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith called them “unrealistic” and “unachievable.”
“I think quite frankly it’s unachievable to have all industrial power, all heating, all transportation, all on a net-zero power grid by 2035. Unachievable. I don’t even want to pretend that it’s possible to do, because in the end our job is to make sure life is affordable for people.”
The latest numbers appear to bear that out. In fact, AESO said Alberta needs more natural gas generation — not less — to ensure a reliable and affordable grid.
“It is critical that Alberta add more base-load power from natural gas and other sources to our electricity grid to protect the reliability and affordability of power for Albertans,” it said in a statement.
It comes as Albertans are facing soaring power bills after what Smith blames on the former NDP government’s early retirement of coal plants, the last of which is to close this year.
Indeed, the pool price capped out at $999.99 per megawatt hour on Monday, which fell to around $50 by morning. That’s still 128% higher than a year ago, according to the latest national inflation numbers released on Aug. 15.
And it comes amid growing controversy over her government’s decision to impose a moratorium on renewable power approvals — not because it isn’t needed — but due to the lack of base load sources to back it up.
“We need to address intermittency so if we’re bringing on intermittent unreliable power there has to be an equivalence of base-load power brought on, that’s what we have to figure out, what’s the mix, is how much intermittent unreliable power can we have, and how much baseline power do we need to commission,” Smith said.
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