Alberta emergency power alert underlines challenge of energy transition on Prairies
Saturday evening's emer‐ gency alert from the province of Alberta, warn‐ ing of rotating power out‐ ages because of pressure on the electrical grid caused by the extreme cold, underlines just how difficult the energy transi‐ tion is going to be in the Prairie provinces, ac‐ cording to economist An‐ drew Leach.
It also demonstrates why more flexibility is needed in Ottawa's Clean Energy Regu‐ lations to decarbonize the country's electricity grids, he says.
The emergency alert was issued at 6:44 p.m. Saturday. Residents were asked to im‐ mediately reduce electricity use to essentials only. The Al‐ berta Emergency Manage‐ ment Agency (AEMA) urged Albertans to turn off unneces‐ sary lights, avoid cooking with a stove and delay charging electric vehicles.
The Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO) ended the grid alert for the system just before 9 p.m.
Leach is an energy and en‐ vironmental economist and a professor of economics and law at the University of Alber‐ ta.
In an interview with CBC News on Sunday, he said the emergency alert was a result of a confluence of extreme conditions.
"You had, for much of Al‐ berta, the coldest night in 50 years, you had … a particular‐ ly acute low wind event, and last night a lack of import availability because of a lot of pressures on the Saskatchewan grid and on the B.C. grid at the same time as we were facing pressures. Add to that the unexpected out‐ age of a gas plant. That alone puts you there," Leach said.
The province's energy grid had as little as 10 megawatts in reserve power at one point on Saturday night, according to the AESO supply demand report.
Shortly after the alert was issued, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe put out a tweet, saying his province was pro‐ viding 153 megawatts of power to Alberta to help them during the shortage. The tweet included a pointed barb aimed at the prime min‐ ister.
"That power will be coming from natural gas and coalfired plants, the ones the
Trudeau government is telling us to shut down (which we won't)," Moe wrote.
Leach says he under‐ stands where that impulse to fight back against Ottawa's new Clean Energy Regulations comes from.
He says just because other markets in the U.S. and Cana‐ da can make this switch to largely renewable systems without risking grid reliability, that doesn't mean that Alber‐ ta and Saskatchewan are being too pro-fossil fuel when they push back.
"That presents a really big challenge and I think people have been too quick to wave that away," Leach said.
WATCH | Temperatures in Edmonton are breaking records:
Leif Sollid is the communi‐ cations manager for AESO. He says the last time the province was this close to im‐ plementing rotating power outages was during another extreme weather event.
"The last time we had ro‐ tating outages — which means we've run out of our backup reserves — was back in July of 2013, during the flood. So it's been 11 years since we've been in this tight of a supply situation," he told
CBC Radio's Daybreak Alberta on Sunday morning.
If rotating outages are re‐ quired, they would occur si‐ multaneously in small pock‐ ets across the province and they would be approximately 30 minutes in duration.
"What the outages do is basically bring down overall system demand, so we can balance supply and demand. Supply and demand balance is absolutely critical," Sollid said.
Pointing to the fact that the province had a 12 per cent increase in power gener‐ ating capacity last year, and is expecting similar growth this year, Sollid said grid alerts, like those issued over the past few days, should become less necessary in the future.
"The supply picture is actu‐ ally very positive, and that will help us over the longer term," he said.
But Leach says not all ad‐ ditional capacity is created equal, especially on the Prairies.
"A lot of that increase last year was solar power, so solar capacity doesn't change any‐ thing at all for a 7 p.m. January spike," he said.
"You could have had 50,000 megawatts, all the so‐ lar farms and wind farms in the world located in Alberta, and it still wouldn't have come anywhere close to clos‐ ing that gap."
That's why Leach says reg‐ ulatory flexibility is needed for the part of the country that is awash in cheap energy in the summer, from wind and solar, but in the depths of winter, during really cold con‐ ditions and really high energy loads, those resources do not generate a lot of power.
"A solution relying exclu‐ sively on wind power, solar power and trade isn't going to get you through a really cold, dark night in Alberta," he said.
AESO's Leif Sollid said im‐ mediately after Saturday's emergency alert was issued, people in the system control room could see a drop in power demand.
"It immediately fell by 100 megawatts and a couple of minutes later, it fell another 100 megawatts. So, a 200megawatt drop, and that got us through what we call the hump," he said.
Until the cold snap ends, Albertans can continue to help by reducing power and conserving electricity during the peak period, Sollid said.
"It's simple things… things like not running your dish‐ washer, not doing laundry, not plugging in your car, putting your block heater on a timer so it's drawing power outside of that 4 to 7 p.m. window. Very small things like that, but when done across the province, as we saw last night, things like that will make a difference and will help us out."
Leach agrees. Looking ahead to Sunday evening, he says electricity reduction will remain important.
"It's really not looking great. We're not at the crisis level that we had last night, but 5 and 9 p.m. the market's still going to be pretty tight," he said.
"We need a small drop in demand. We don't need everybody to change every‐ thing."