The Alberta Electric System Operator issued a new grid alert for the province Monday morning amid an ongoing stretch of extremely cold temperatures, but dropped it shortly after.
“The AESO has declared a grid alert due to extreme cold, and several power facility outages,” the non-profit organization tweeted at 8:12 a.m.
At 9:21 a.m., the AESO tweet that the grid alert had ended as “increasing wind and solar generation have created some relief on the system.”
The organization noted Albertans should continue to try to limit the amount of electricity they use between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m., a time frame when power consumption in the province generally tends to peak.
The AESO acknowledged that “extreme cold continues to challenge all of us in Western Canada.”
The alert was the fourth one issued by the AESO since Friday, urging citizens to limit their power consumption during peak times and warning about the potential for rotating blackouts if demand gets too high.
No blackouts were needed, but the temperature in much of Alberta at the time of the second alert on Saturday was -40 C.
The AESO says it works with industry partners “to keep electricity flowing throughout the province.”
“Our system controllers balance supply and demand 24/7, 365 days a year, to ensure four million Albertans have power when they need it,” the AESO’s website reads.
On its website, the AESO says it issues grid alerts when “the power system is under stress and we’re preparing to use emergency reserves to meet demand and maintain system reliability.”
“Consumers are asked to reduce their electricity use during grid alerts to help mitigate the possibility of undertaking more serious emergency measures to balance the system, including rotating power outages.”
Leif Sollid, the manager of communications for the AESO, spoke to Global News on Monday and acknowledged “the power grid has been under a lot of pressure” ever since particularly cold weather arrived in Alberta last week.
“We set an all-time record last Thursday for power demand,” he recounted. “We were able to get through that OK. We had a lot of wind on the system. We didn’t have really any natural gas facilities offline. So we got through that fine.
“But since then, Friday, Saturday, Sunday and even this morning, we’ve been under what we call a grid alert condition — that’s where we’ve used all available power to meet demand and we’re now having to use backup power because we’ve exhausted our available supply.”
After an emergency alert was issued Saturday evening asking Albertans to conserve energy, Minister of Affordability and Utilities Nathan Neudorf said the response was quick and effective.
“The response was absolutely tremendous. We saw 100 megawatts come off within the first minute and another 100 megawatts within minutes after that. Just to give some reference to that, 100 megawatts is approximately the equivalent of what 120,000 houses would use in an hour,” Neudorf said.
The minister said this was the first time an emergency alert like this was issued, adding it was the result of a “perfect storm of events.”
“We had a massive cold front from the Northwest Territories that encompassed B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan, Montana,” he said. “Idaho also had grid alert which really restricted the imports we could get from Montana. We had a couple thermal generators go offline due to the cold and mechanical problems and when the sun goes down early — which is does in the winter — we had no wind generation. All of those things happened all at the same time.”
Sollid suggested part of the reason Alberta’s grid is more vulnerable at this time of year is because of reduced opportunities to generate solar power with the shorter days in winter, and because during extreme cold, there is usually less opportunity for wind power generation.
According to Sollid, over the last few days, more than 80 per cent of Alberta’s power has come from natural gas and to a lesser extent coal.
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“That’s what’s been keeping the lights on in Alberta during this very challenging time,” he said, noting that overall the province has a more diverse mix to draw on for power supply. Sollid said overall, natural gas accounts for about 60 per cent of Alberta power supply with most of the other 40 per cent coming from wind and solar.
“We need all forms of power in Alberta to meet demand: solar, wind, natural gas. With the way things are, it’s been a bit of a tough slog for the last few days. But the good news is we have been able to meet Albertans’ power requirements. There have been no outages, but it’s involved a lot of work on behalf of the AESO system controllers and the entire power industry in Alberta and beyond to get us through this.
“I think we learned this past weekend that our interconnectedness with other jurisdictions is critical, absolutely critical. Saskatchewan for a while on the weekend was the only other jurisdiction able to send us power. Their max power that they could donate through that intertie was 153 megawatts. I think that needs a serious look at to see if we can expand that.”
While one step the AESO can take when the grid is strained is to ask consumers to try to limit their use, Sollid said there are three “key tools” the province can use to respond to such situations.
“When we get into a grid alert situation, we will suspend exports — so that means we will not have any power leave Alberta,” he said. “We have agreements with large industrial customers where we can ask them to either reduce their power consumption or basically go offline … and we can request emergency imports — those are sort of the three key tools.”
Sollid noted that when it comes to emergency imports, Alberta has received “very significant support from other jurisdictions” over the past few days, in particular from Saskatchewan, but also from British Columbia.
Green energy plans criticized amid extreme cold
Some politicians in Western Canada have criticized the federal government’s green-energy plans amid the ongoing cold snap, saying on social media that they believe electricity grid alerts in Alberta show renewables cannot be relied on when temperatures drop.
The first alert on Friday prompted a tweet from Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, who called renewable energy sources unreliable and said natural gas was necessary to keep Canadians safe.
In Saskatchewan, Premier Scott Moe posted on social media the next day saying his province had sent Alberta some surplus power generated through coal and natural gas.
Moe said such energy methods are the same ones the federal government wants to shut down, but Liberals disagree.
Randy Boissonnault, the only federal cabinet minister from Alberta and one of only two Liberal MPs from the province, called the statements from the premiers “a petty, untrue and partisan attack.”
He blamed part of the issue on “decades of under investment in the electricity grid.”
When asked if Alberta needs to continue to expand its grid, Sollid said that because the province has a “deregulated competitive power market,” companies can build new wind, solar or natural gas facilities — and they do.
“We are seeing some very, very strong growth in that area,” he said. “In fact, in 2023, the generation supply grew by 13 per cent.”
Sollid said he believes that amount of growth may be one of the largest increases the province has seen year over year and that even more growth is currently projected for 2024.
“(That’s a) very positive picture for Alberta going forward,” he said. “Power system operators across Western Canada and the U.S., they’re all facing similar challenges.
“It’s not just Alberta, everyone is struggling to have enough power.”
Blake Shaffer, an energy economist at the University of Calgary, also told Global News that Albertans should know the province has “so much supply coming on.”
“While it feels like we’re in an imminent crisis, it is about to get better,” he said. “That’s not a forecast, that’s just looking at what’s under construction, and what’s already constructed.”
Neudorf said within the next few months, Alberta should see “significant capacity” of about 1,800 megawatts coming online.
Sollid said while renewable energy is very important and “plays a very, very critical role and a growing role in Alberta’s power system,” cold snaps like the one the province is currently experiencing demonstrate “there’s no getting away from the fact we need dispatchable generation at certain times,” referring to power supplied through sources like natural gas plants that can essentially be turned on and off at will.”
Shaffer said that renewable sources of electricity are important but “we don’t expect them to be there in the darkest and coldest hours.”
“You’re going to hear that makes them horrible (but) no, that makes them what they are,” he explained. “I wear flip-flops in the summer — it doesn’t make them a good winter boot.
“(Renewables) save fuel the times that they’re there, but this weekend is a reminder that of course we need those flexible dispatchable resources … in these periods of need.”
–With files from The Canadian Press
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