Think globally, inform locally;
“In Alberta, we have the capacity for 1,463 Mw of wind, and we gather that over a huge area,” he said, noting wind energy production is gathered from an area the size of The Netherlands in southern Alberta.
Often, wind generation is only able to hit an average of 30 per cent of capacity due to periods where it slips below the five per cent threshold (considered to be zero output). That instability in power levels is a major issue for supplying power to Albertans.
In contrast, the Sheerness generating station near Hanna has a capacity of 780 Mw.
“It provides more electricity than all the wind turbines in Alberta,” Schaupmeyer said, adding coal generation also has stable output.
Good work CAS.
And of course, which electricity source is on the chopping block? Sean McCormick, no comments?
I agree, well done CAS.
It’s almost as if Notley and her imbeciles have never read a report on the failures of renewable energies attempted throughout the world. She is creating problems, BIG MASSIVE problems where they didn’t exist before. Coal power in our part of the world is absolutely viable.
We have excellent coal and in abundance. In a few years if our governments brain cells do not come back it will only be shipped (via fossil fuels ironically) to other jurisdictions for their betterment (again, the irony).
If you are going to kill a province, do it quickly. Notley would be an impressive hunter if she knew the difference between a mangy coyote and your neighbors prized bull.
I read that yesterday, following his link in Reader’s Tips. Great job!
And by the look of some of the comments in the Lethbridge Herald story, the NDP has some of its stooges doing what they do best……make idiotic arguments against reality and facts.
Thanks for the support. Thanks for posting Kate.
Sometimes the Herald items are paywalled so I uploaded the original here:
http://photoshare.shaw.ca/image/2/d/8/63987/heraldjan171000-0.jpg
The Herald gave it a prominent headline on page 3. I spoke to about 80 senior councilors, reeves and senior admin staff from 14 southern municipalities…all of rural southern Alberta. They said it was perfect and gave it rave reviews. The WR party said they want this presented to their caucus. Shall see. One MD CAO said they make $1.5 million from wind taxes but they hate the turbines. Once approved by the AUC, the MDs are obligated to approve permits as they do not contravene development regs.
The cost to prematurely close Alberta’s coal plants will be about $50 BILLION! The ND plan is to replace 2/3 of the lost power with wind (and other renewables like solar .. ha ha) and 1/3 with gas.
Close coal = $10 billion in buy outs
Build 12,000 MW of wind.. $24 billion
Build gas for the other 1/3 = ~ $3.5 billion
Build extra gas for backup when wind is low or zero as it is 2 to 4 times every week = another $3 or 4 billion.
Transmission for inefficient wind will be about $10 billion.
Total will be about $50 billion. Utter insanity and a waste of resources.
Ontario closed a few coals plants, but their baseload (and 60% of their power) comes from nuclear with considerable hydro and gas..and a mere 5% from wind. Their power costs have doubled in six years! And, by 2030, Alberta is sked to lose its main baseload being coal. Then we will be at teh mercy of the gas generators when there is no wind. We will have one vulnerable baseload.
Okay so the NDs will be “frying chicken” in just 3½ years. Clearly there will not be enough time to do much damage EXCEPT the BIG threat is they will sign irrevocable contracts with Suncor, TransAlta, Enbridge, Capital Power etc (who own all of our wind farms) to supply subsidized wind power for 20 years. (a la Ontario and Germany) And they will get a big fat subsidy. They do not give a flying f**k about climate etc. They only see profits via subsidies coming directly our of our wallets via our rear ends. See here….easy to see where this is headed fast.
http://edmontonjournal.com/business/energy/capital-power-sees-opportunities-in-albertas-climate-plan
If I find 20 hours I may actually write the 45-minte Power Point presentation with charts etc … one day. Maybe.
Thanks again.
Clive
Keep up up the good fight, CAS. We are seeing fascism in action with the NDP. Meanwhile, the NDP plans to close a handful of Alberta coal fired power plants and China has another 1,200 coal fired power plants in the planning stage. Unfreaking believable!
If anyone wants a peek into the green crystal ball for Alberta’s wind energy future, pick up a copy of DIRTY BISINESS: The Reality of Ontario’s rush to wind power (Jane Wilson/Parker Gallant). ISBN 978-0-9877210-0-6
> Sean McCormick, no comments?
Have a day job, or what’s left of one (thanks Rachel!). Didn’t see this until now. Sorry. What can I say? I voted Wildrose.
The AESO webpage should be the home page on every computers of the Alberta Climate Leadership membership.
http://ets.aeso.ca/ets_web/ip/Market/Reports/CSDReportServlet
Ontario doesn’t need anywhere near as much generation as it used to. In 2006 our peak demand was 27,000 Mw. It’s usually around 20,000 Mw these days. That’s as a result of “Conservation” and economic collapse. Some of the conservation is real. I got rid of my electric stove, and have all LED lighting, and I will get rid of my electric drier when I need another one.
Clive, a bit more on Ontario. First, the government signed the agreements for the refurbishing of Bruce and Darlington. In total, about $25-30 billion. The Bruce project is entirely privately funded. When complete, these twelve reactors will continue operating until about 2050, providing half or more of Ontario’s electricity for essentially the lifetime and beyond of most anyone reading this. It’s not a plunge into the unknown; Bruce already refurbished two reactors, not it’s doing the remaining six at the site.
It should be noted that this nuclear refurbishment program kicks off immediately this year. It constitutes infrastructure development dwarfing anything that the federal Liberal government is likely to achieve. Once again, thanks to nuclear, Ontario will again have Canada’s largest infrastructure projects. These will keep collectively at least 5,000-6,000 additional workers employed for about a decade.
Second, the government and OPG are now seeking ways to extend operation of Pickering. The plant was supposed to close in 2020, but now they want to continue its operation to at least 2025.
Third, NOT reported by the press was that in Ontario, a complex decision on generation costs by the IESO means that wind and solar no longer have first access to the grid. No longer will Ontario be venting nuclear steam or spilling water from dams.
In sum, the nuclear initiatives mean that the growth prospects of renewables in Ontario are greatly diminished. However the rates decision by IESO starts killing their business case now. It’s wind turbines that will be idled in the event of a generation surplus, NOT nuclear and hydro.
Naturally, the green lobby is hysterically irate. Their foaming-at-the-mouth fury can be seen over the past week or so in the assorted pages of the Red Star. They are even more furious that the Auditor General’s report of a few weeks back condemned the fiscal policies surrounding the feed-in tariffs for the renewables in such scathing terms.
In short, ignore all the government rhetoric about green power in Ontario. By its decisions collectively noted above, Ontario has for all practical purposes turned its back on renewables. No one has said anything about it in these terms, but in fact they constitute a reversal of an energy policy dating back to the Rae government of the early 1990s.
I must admit, I find it intriguing that Alberta is launching itself down an energy policy road that Britain, and now Ontario, have abandoned.
“Schaupmeyer noted many people don’t realize the actual cost of renewable energy and how the plan to end coal use is going to bite into their wallets.”
=====================================================
The greenies have been saying for years that the cost of solar and wind are dropping so fast that they’re now cheaper than fossil fuels, and the media is eager and happy to print that with the result that a lot of people don’t have a clue what it’s going to cost them.
Thanks for the perspective egh.
It is utter insanity what is being proposed here when ON and other places have been there and are backing away. UK and Spain have slashed subsidies. Germany is not backing away but building new coal plants (burning mainly nasty lignite) to cover for the miserable performance of renewables. My PPT included a slide with this statement: Alberta is about to embark down a steep, slippery slope where others have gone and now they want out.
Dirtman..good point. If PV panels were free, solar would still be insanely expensive. I read a cost estimate from Boyd Solar (perhaps the most honest salesman alive)..as I recall, on a $120,000 solar installation the panels were something like $12K. The rest was construction, mechanical and batteries.
The main difference between what Alberta proposes and ON, UK, Germany and elsewhere is they all have baseloads from hydro, nuclear or coal. Notely and Phillips what to remove our workhorse baseload source: clean coal.
And BTW, all that media and hype from Notely and Phillips about coal was bad for our health was a damn lie. They used a discredited Pembina report. (Alberta’s own Greenpeace and Suzuki-like cabal of radical enviros). A recent study by the Dept of Public Health at the U of Alberta concluded:
[quote]
1) Accelerating the closure of coal plants will have little, if any, impact on Edmonton’s air quality.
2) Edmontonians and residents in outlying communities are entitled to know that, although health concerns may be legitimate, the important sources of pollutants are not coal facilities. Appropriate actions should be taken to better understand and deal with the major sources of pollutants if the municipality and the province chose to address this issue.
3) Drawing a linkage between human health concerns and coal fired generation west of Edmonton is unsubstantiated by science and should not continue as a rationale for closing coal units. [end quote.]
Edm is slightly in the wind stream of the coal plants to the west. However, most Albertans live nowhere near a coal generation plant.
These green weenie thugs are Eco-fascists. A disgrace … with no moral authority to “rule” … hardly ruling.
On the bright side the Calgary newspaper had to lay off a bunch more liars and repeaters but they will soon be snapped up by the equally useless NDPee govt for communications I’m sure. Started out a good day. This failed outdated throwback to the 20s the windmill, will end up costing the western economies their entire treasury, the facilitators and politicians who are shoving these white elephants will be long gone when farmer Bob is trying to push the edifices to stupidity over, with the John Deere, just to sell the scrap iron to re-coupe some of his losses to the numbered companies when they skip town. Like all Ponzie schemes the last ones in, lose the most, but Rach will stumble on like an angry cow out to get everyone who ever had the nerve to know she is an arrogant idiot.
CAS, there’s another problem not often referred to by most literature. Some basic physics: with wind, energy varies with the cube of the speed. This means that small variations in wind speed produce large variations in energy produced. On a day where wind is gusting for example, you can have large sags and surges within short time periods. This can introduce significant power quality problems into the grid. The main way I know of to damp it out is with a large capacitor bank, but I am uncertain if this is required of wind generators.
You would need to talk to electrical engineers running the grid to conclude if this is a significant problem or not.
The same kind of variability can affect solar with stray cloud cover. In solar, at least 75% of energy generated comes from direct lighting, only 25% from indirect lighting. So again, rapid cloud movement can introduce rapid surges and sags in power output, again possibly constituting a significant power quality problem.
Also, consider whether or not wind turbines and solar farms come with decommissioning requirements on the builder. If not, as is the case with some in Ontario, the farmer renting land to the turbine company may be stuck with a concrete stub on his land after the wind turbine is done, and the company abandons the site and strips the turbine of any useful salvage.
Now with respect to Edmonton air quality, if there are effects this will be the result of emissions from Keephills and Genessee. However these units have existing emission controls which include flue gas desulfurization, low-NOx burners, mercury emission controls and fine particulate filtering. It may be reasonable to argue that all of the units at these stations should be upgraded to have all these emission controls to meet modern standards. But it is not reasonable to argue that they cannot be upgraded and thus must be shut down.
Where are the headquarters/head/sub offices of theses various green/eco vandals located??
Cut and paste is your friend.
These eco-freaks cound’nt care less about birds and bats harmed by their windfarms all they care about is the idiotic green ideologies and their so called enviromental freindly green poppycock bull twaddle
Thanks cgh.
Harmonic wind output is a big issue…some may not know that wind goes up and down over time (a few hours) but also pulses over short periods. It is not quite as smooth as people might think. We understand that AESO has spent tens of millions trying to integrate wind with least disruption. The more wind, the higher the need for spinning reserves to deal with medium-term fluctuations.
“You would need to talk to electrical engineers running the grid to conclude if this is a significant problem or not.” Oh gosh a few years ago the AESO annual report was comedic. They kept referring to integrating wind…over and over they mentioned it. The budgets were large. Two of our close group are engineers: one an electrical engineer with experience in generation systems in several countries; the other a mechanical engineer who has worked extensively in nuclear generation.
There are questions about decommissioning here….and no one is saying too much. I photographed the Big Island turbines in 2012 before they were taken down at a cost of 2 or 3 million. They were in a shambles.
RE: Edmonton air quality. The U of A study found that little Genesee and Keephills pollutants were getting to the city. You can look at air quality data for Edm here:
http://www.yourenvironment.ca/edmonton.php
Air is better then 20 years ago.
The big issues with air quality in Alberta are:
— forest fire smoke..even in an average year 2.5P particulate is about 1000X more then from coal
— agricultural and road dusts
— industrial and transportation sources.
Yeti posted the link to real time electrical production in Alberta. Thanks Yeti. You can also read daily and weekly reports going back years here: http://ets.aeso.ca/
Left menu>>> Historical >>> “Select a report” >> daily or weekly from the drop down menu. The weekly reports show how pathetic wind is over a one-week period. Often at or near zero.
Thanks to all
CAS
Good for you sir. Keep up the good work. Maybe this insanity can be stopped before Albertans are taken to the cleaners.
Unfortunately, you can’t stop spectacularly stupid people from doing spectacularly stupid things.
We can hope, but then look at Ontario and Ottawa.
seriously folks, most of the time Ive considered wind farms since seeing them on some goofy european science/engineering show about 30 years ago, is that the best viable application would be anywhere a hit and miss source of energy was still useful.
like using them to heat a tank of water, as the blades spin, the temperature gradually rises. and on average, the user finds the best avg time of day to do the laundry.
bottom line is the HAS to be some sort of ‘energy sink’, be it mechanical, thermal, electrical or whatever, to address the whole issue of permanently unpredictable wind speed.
the thing that has turned me sour on the entire fustecluck called wind energy is the deaths of all those countless migratory birds.
there will be a day of reckoning. will we face swarms of trillions of mosquitoes because of the new absence of the birds? I don’t know, but nature, will have her way. she will prevail. can you stop a mountain falling on your head? can we pathetic humans hold back the power of a Mount St Helens?
common sense aint so common anymore.
Find yourself the track “Common Sense” from John Prines album of the same name.
The refrain “It don’t make no sense that common sense don’t make no sense no more”
Been my nominantion for theme song of the 21st century for some time
… it’s almost as if Notley and her imbeciles have never read a report on the failures of renewable energies
You’re missing the point, Joel. There are two upsides for all green energy espousing politicians. They get to stuff wads of money into their cronies’ pockets AT THE SAME TIME as feeling good about themselves for saving the planet. But it’s the wads of cash that are important.
ya’ll want to freeze and starve in the dark then get rid of your fossil fuels. Your life will be short and brutal.
AESO website, current power generation in Alberta at 8:35 AM has total wind generation at 1 megawatt or .07% of capacity. Even if we doubled the total wind capacity, meaning that you could not drive anywhere in southern Alberta without being within sight of a windmill, you would not have replaced the need for the Sheerness station, as we are currently consuming 2/3 of our maximum capacity. Only the Wintering Hills wind farm is generating power this AM.
Bill Greenwood.
Thanks. It is often that Pathetic. Wind output has soared to 4MW now. ☺ ☺ I gave that presentation last Friday. That day and the next day there was, de facto, NO wind electricity for ~ 28 hours running.
Of course these NPD mental “math is gard” midgets will tell you that solar will also be part of the renewable mix. For fun, look up “Gila Bend solar” and “Ivanpah solar” … abject failures. And these are in southern AZ and CA when it rarely freezes. Ivanpah gets a lot of its heat from natural gas now.
Also look up Mark Jacobsen + renewables. Utter insanity.
At the U of Lethbridge there are three or four “professors” (and I use the term loosely) who worship renewables and Jacobsen. The are Shannon’s buddies.
Tim Weiss, ex CanWEA, is now our energy minister’s adviser. Marlo Raynolds ex Pembina and ex BluEarth (“Wind is free” they say) is now federal enviro minister’s adviser. Ecos have infiltrated all levels of gov’t.
We live in scary times. The big question is: how much damage can these borons do in 3½ years? If they lock us into billion-dollar contracts my poor grandkids will be paying decades from now.
As much as I admire Brad Wall, it does not help when he says that SK will have a lot of renewables in 20 years.
Thanks to all for your interest. I actually have work to do now. ☺
Sigh!
CAS
What I don’t understand is that there is a relatively untouched source of renewable energy that is totally ignored. Hydro has barely been touched, only the headwaters of the Saskatchewan River system are dammed. The Peace, Athabasca, North Saskatchewan and Slave Rivers should be able to provide most of Alberta’s power needs.
Last night in the UK the wind power supplied to the national grid fell. In fact at 7 p.m. yesterday it was supplying only 0.14% of the demand, that’s right, less than one five hundredth of what was needed. Truly this is the future.
P.S. It’s getting a bit cold here as well
At 6:06 PM Wednesday January 20, AESO reports ZERO watts of wind power in Alberta. All of that for $5 BILLION … which YOU pay for. And now Shannon wants 6,000 new 2-MW wind turbines for a cool $50 billion all in.
Math is hard for dippers.