The near-record Arctic temperatures that have taken hold in Alberta also led to the province setting another record in all-time demand for electricity. And another near-record day is expected.
On Thursday at around 6 p.m., the new hourly peak demand record was set at 12,384 megawatts (MW), beating a previous record of 12,193 MW set in December 2022.
The Alberta Energy System Operator (AESO) said that new record was based on energy requirements from industrial, commercial, agricultural and residential users.
“We typically hit our peak load periods in the winter when furnaces are running hard, block heaters are plugged in and space heaters are going,” Leif Sollid, AESO manager of communications, said Friday.
Friday afternoon at 4:15 p.m., AESO issued a grid alert, due to “high power demand due to extreme cold, two large natural gas generator outages, and very low renewable power on the system.”
All of Alberta is currently under an extreme cold warning, with temperatures well below -30 C and wind chill below -40, thanks to a polar vortex.
Sollid said Alberta’s energy grid was able to meet the demand on Thursday without any hiccups.
“We had sufficient supply available on hand, and one of the key factors there was we had a lot of wind power on the system last night, which was a big, big help to us,” he said. “Today, wind has fallen off dramatically, which is kind of what we typically see when we get an Arctic high like this, a polar vortex, we get very little wind. And so today, our big challenge on the grid is that we have so little wind.”
He also noted that on Friday, one natural gas generator was down for scheduled maintenance and another had a weather-related outage, resulting in a “very tight” electricity market.
Friday’s forecasted highs across the province didn’t have the mercury getting much over -30 C, continuing to put demand on the grid to help keep homes and businesses warm and operating.
Sollid said the AESO has an “excellent track record” of meeting demand in all weather conditions and hasn’t had transmission-level outages since 2013.
In more challenging conditions like this week, the AESO can reduce exports of electricity, can ask industrial users to curtail their usage and the system operator has backup reserves of about 600 MW to use in grid alert situations.
But residential users can also help out.
AESO said peak grid demand year round is usually between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. – the supper hour.
“It’s when people are coming home, cooking dinner, perhaps, doing laundry, running their dishwasher, those sorts of activities,” Sollid said.
The AESO said delaying running a dishwasher or doing laundry until later in the evening, turning off lights while not using them and putting a vehicle block heater on a timer over that supper hour can help the province during weather-related times of high electricity demand.
“Small things like that taken across the province can really help us just reduce demand a little bit. And that could make all the difference to get us over that peak period,” Sollid said.
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