Brian Zinchuk: At the moment SaskPower set a summer consumption record, wind power was generating just 4.7 % of its capacity
“Extreme heat drives up electricity consumption, and higher peaks are a sign of the growing demand for power in Saskatchewan,” said Kory Hayko, SaskPower Vice-President of Transmission and Industrial Services, in a release. “Demand will continue to grow in the coming years, and SaskPower is making significant investments in the grid to ensure that need is met with reliable and sustainable power.”
At that time of the peak, SaskPower was getting just 29 megawatts from its eight wind facilities, most of which operated under power purchase agreements. Saskatchewan has a total of 615 megawatts of nameplate wind power capacity, meaning that when the demand was highest, wind was generating just 4.7 per cent of its installed capacity.
As weather tends to track from west to east, it probably wasn’t much of as surprise, as the day before, Alberta saw its wind power generation drop to 0.5 per cent of its capacity at 4:08 p.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 30. At that time, Alberta was producing just 13 megawatts out of a nameplate capacity of 2,589 megawatts.
Note the word “sustainable” in the Kory Hayko quote. That’s code for “we’re paying millions for unreliable crap to appease the climate gods”.
This province sits upon thousands of years’ worth of reliable energy sources in the form of uranium, coal, oil and gas. Yet, we continue to witness purported pragmatic, conservative politicians squander our money and the stability of the electrical grid — while knowing they’re squandering our money and the stability of the grid — to appease a hard left environmental lobby who hates us and wants us dead. Enough. Enough with the virtue signalling at our expense.
We had a power outage here a couple of days ago. The power just went down, for no good reason. It happens relatively frequently, and brownouts are increasingly common. If SaskPower can’t keep the lights on during a calm, sunny Saskatchewan summer afternoon — something’s wrong.
And as you’ve said many times previously, “pleasing your enemies does not turn them into friends”
If actual wind/solar generated electrical production could be increased by a factor of 10x or 20x … they’d still hate you.
Reaching across the aisle, as if to say to the devil, “here, it’s only half my heart but now we can be friends”.
It doesn’t work that way. We all know it.
Alberta, has +1100 years of coal at current rates of mining. You don’t go looking for another 100 years of coal supplies when you’ve reached that plateau.
I suspect Sask. has ample supplies as well. Only SaskPower needs to find a spine and tell the leftists “how they really feel”
All that coal and minerals.
Our dear leaders are saving that for the Chinese when we are gone, I am confident they will put it to good use.
And that’s the truth Ruth.
Must it be our fate, Kate?
Meanwhile in Germany, high energy costs are shutting down factories, but that’s good right, that’s what we want here, right?
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Worlds-Second-Largest-Steelmaker-Closes-European-Plant.html
That is an indicator that an economic downturn of biblical proportions will soon hit the EU. With any luck, the Europa building in Brussels will become a smoldering pile of rubble. They deserve it.
Its a great plan if one wants the only remaining heavy industrial manufacturing to be located in China, India, and possibly Mexico. Lord knows they have their carbon emissions under control in those nations. And their commitment to diversity? Its legendary.
That’s exactly what the gang greens want.
It’s wealth redistribution. It has nothing to do with climate.
20% of US aluminum production is already shuttered, because of high electricity prices. Meanwhile, Biden is bleeding US armaments to Ukraine.
Thank goodness armaments don’t use aluminum.
There are two things that both Saskatchewan and Alberta need to make clear to everybody including the dorks in Ottawa. Under NO conditions will we permit energy or food security to be compromised for the ideological stupidity of politicians. NOT NEGOTIABLE.
Unfortunately Art,
It is already too late for that, and would require politicians with a backbone, and a populace of non sheep to back them. Canada has none of either.
The sheep will get shorn and slaughtered, that’s the life of a sheep.
The bottom line on wind turbines is that infinity (# of wind turbines) x 0 = 0.
L – I’m waiting for the wind power zealots to chain themselves to the windmill blades, in a
show of solidarity and self-sacrifice, to their goddess Herricane.
Hopefully it will be live-streamed; because I’d pay to see THAT.
roaddog
‘Libbeys stuck in a bird chopper, warm thoughts. ‘
Electricity highest, wind was generating just 4.7 per cent of its installed capacity.
No gas, no food, no phone’s, no pets, no jobs.
Where is John Gualt ?
Trump told him, ‘Get the hell out while you can.’
Very nice, very nice.
How are you feeling, now that Der Fuhrer branded you an enemy of Democracy? Surely that motivates you to vote for for him.
I’ve never seen a Democrat work so hard to rally voters to the cause of a Republican.
Shouldn’t the lawyers be lining up for a MAJOR CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT for the citizens of the Province?
Obviously the promised electricity it was supposed to supply and the profits promised the Province didn’t occur.
Such a major investment that it’s citizens provided by taxation and it’s production failure to supply it vital infrastructure.
If you can’t sue the company , sue the politicians that authorities the subsidies these companies and corporations were getting…they certainly made a bundle themselves…
Why don’t they just buy electricity from Manitoba Hydro? Don’t they have surplus power from the Nelson River project (and a huge amount of debt)?
Yes and yes……
Extreme heat or cold are usually accompanied by no wind. Usually. Look at Britain a few winters ago. Very cold and no wind for the windmills and winter sun for solar. Many people died when they were sacrificed to the green god. The green god is a jealous god and merciless to the serfs. It must always be appeased by human sacrifice.
There are two types of people when it comes to “green” energy not working.
The first group is too stupid to learn about day/night, summer/winter, windy/calm when it comes to “green” energy, they just parrot the sound bites and carry on doubling down on promoting the folly.
The second group is smart enough to know “green” energy doesn’t work, but they are making money off of the scam building/installing/maintaining the folly, keeping quiet because they have families to feed and houses to pay for like everyone else.
Green Energy Today… Brownouts Tomorrow.
Meteorology should be mandatory in all high schools along with the 3 ‘ R ‘ s.
Sticking your finger in the wind don’t cut it no more.
If Saskatchewan is smart they will use the Russian scare (the impending doom in Germany and UK due to the loss of cheap Russian gas and oil) to beef up their electricity grid.
And for God’s sakes why doesn’t have Saskatchewan have at least one nuclear power station? It has the best uranium mines on the planet. It’s called downstream infrastructure.
Use the Russian energy crisis to implement these changes. You won’t get a second chance.
Ha ha , you make too much sense.
I need to get back to my Kardashian tv program now and see who has the biggest butt.
You Western dummkopfs can fry in the heat!
Moe is a watermelon: green (SK party) on the outside but really red inside.
He is only doing the minimum to appease the populace but does not like his voters.
Not sure Moe I’d “red on the inside”…he seems more like a palooka conservative that just gets bent by the system. He’s the type of guy that is told stuff and just accepts that that’s the way it is.
When did Moe need to walk something back from the right? When did SK party voters ever say, ‘easy Moe, that’s too far right for us’?
He goes as left wing, nanny as he can get away with.
When I lived in windy NFL (five years) we had one power outage during a tropical storm, it lasted 15. Keep in mind when I lived there we had an average of 80 klick winds and nearly 1000 cm of snow a year for two years –we broke records. Mean while in NS the power goes out so often it’s not funny, a light drizzle the other day with 40 klick winds and the power was out for hours. Frankly I am sick of our third world medical, power etc status thanks to both liberals and Conservatives bowing to corporations. Green energy, is not green and the only reason the wealthy corporations become shills for it is we pay for it not them. Pass the cost on to power companies and watch how fast they start screaming “It’s not sustainable” unless the tax payers are forced to fund the left’s nonsense.
How many politicians are engineers? Probably zero. The politicians are almost exclusively lawyers or political science grads. Their
number one priority is to get elected, not look after the electorate. They have almost zero understanding of economics or science.
On the other hand, young engineers graduating from school have all bought the climate change BS and are all in on wind, solar, and burning manure. And the middle age engineers may understand it’s BS, but rub their hands together in glee with all of the money they are going to make on commissions on wind, solar, and manure methane.
I am an engineer so I have a good idea what I am talking about.
It’s like Covid Hoaxines. It will take forever for people to realize they have been had.
I need a bigger tub of popcorn while I watch Rome burn.
What more can one do but prepare yourself to weather the huge shitstorm coming for us.
One of my friends decided to go back to university and he said he was majoring in “sustainable energy development.” I told him, ‘please tell me you are going to learn about sucking hydrocarbons out from under the ground for as long as humanly possible.’ He wasn’t.
“sustainable” is UN code for poverty for you but not for me.
If every wind farm in Saskatchewan stopped producing power immediately and indefinitely, saskpower would still have enough electricity and a stable grid. It’s useless and unnecessary to the saskpower system, imo. Wind and solar in this province is built or purchased merely as public relations exercise and useless nod to the zeitgeist of green power.
Having worked with traditional coal fired plants for many years, I’m not a huge fan of coal but, yes, it’s reliable,affordable, dispatchable baseload power. That should always be the goal…in fact reliability and affordability was the formal written goal of saskpower until the late 1990s, iirc, when sustainability was added.
Natgas and hydro are keepers. Coal plants reaching the end of their lifespan should be replaced with small modular nuclear power, except for the coal carbon capture unit which has contract obligations.
Wind and solar has no realistic or practical use in power production for Saskatchewan and should be discontinued.
As for increases in brownout and outages? Yep, I’ve noticed that too. I blame not spending enough on repair, maintenance and upgrades in transmission and distribution. Causes? Administration costs in head office from bloated staffing levels, interference from politicians, spending on stupid stuff like wind/solar and smart meters, T&D district size increases with removal of lineman crews from many towns.
LC ,smart meters are for only one practical purpose.
That’s to shut off your power at their whim if you behave badly in the future coming Hunger Games.
It’s a feature, not a flaw.
Power rationing and social conditioning do appear to be the end goal. Fortunately there aren’t many smart meters in Saskatchewan homes because of a disastrous rollout in 2014. About 100,000 installed smart meters were removed after a half dozen or so house fires due to improper meter installation. The smart meter program was revived last year but doesn’t seem to be popular with homeowners.
Would it be possible to write code for the smart meters so they only allow power into a building in proportion to the production of wind and solar (based on %)? wind and solar at 5%, you only get 5% of normal load. I think that should be mandated for all politicians, the legislature and all gov’t buildings, Saskpower execs and NDP/Lib/Green voters.
As I’ve stated before on this site “Our compassion will be the end of us.” Why do we allow ourselves to be led down these aisles of stupidity that are foisted upon us by so called experts that are intend on surrepticiously stealing our money through various schemes that all promote that we will all be better off if we just aquiesce and do what we are told? Our combined compassion coupled with good manners is the reason. We allow vocal strident minorities to dictate what we have to do to make them happy. Make them happy, as if it is our mission in life to make them happy. We have injected ourselves with an unknown agent that seems to be killing us at an alarming rate. We have allowed ourselves to have our source of heat and light to be curtailed. We have tugged our forelocks and gone hat in hand to plead with our government to have permission to defend ourselves. We have allowed our education system to systemically brainwash our children. All this has happened because we are too polite by half and too compassionate by magnitude times ten. We allow our so called leaders whom we install into a position of power to dictate their ideals to us instead of the other way around. Their ideals are garnered from the vocal minorities and we allow it because we don’t want to be labelled by them as unfeeling ……………. (fill in the blank, mysoginist, homophobe, racist, and now fascist the list can be endless) and yet we are still labelled, vilified, disparaged because they know that they can get away with it by appealing to our compassion.
I tend to approach climate-change books with a good degree of skepticism, but “A Bright Future” is one of the best books I’ve read in a long time. Fascinating insights into energy production and what must be done if we are serious about not just reducing the rate of increase of our carbon footprint, but actually reducing it . Hint…it does not involve wind or solar. Fantastic book, and even more so with the disaster unfolding in Germany, as they were featured prominently in the book, and not in a good light. http://www.brightfuturebook.com/ (Hope links aren’t against the rules)
But the climate change zealots will oppose nuclear because their true objective is the destruction on modern western society, not “decarbonization”.
Oh for sure. Me, however…I’d still like cheap, abundant, clean power. If that accidentally happens to align with some sort of purported climate agenda, then that’s great too.
I do find it amusing that the Venn diagram of “climate zealots” and “likely to freeze to death if western society collapses” is a perfect circle.
And our politicians ALL bow to the climate crazies. Max Bernier is the exception, but he’s being ignored by the same media that hates our guts and wants us dead, just like the Libs/NDP/Greens.
In short, with one exception, our politicians are a bunch of stinking globalist cowards. They don’t have the courage to stand up and declare the truth: that all the climate crap is killing us slowly. We are committing economic suicide over a death cult fantasy.
If half as much money had been spent on small municipal geo-thermal plants as has been spent on wind/solar we would be much further ahead in reducing our carbon consumption. While we are on the subject of energy consumption and sustainability, why are we still immersed in allowing immigration in this period of future uncertainty. You would have to be deaf, dumb, and blind or a complete moron to think that you can keep up an immigration policy bringing in hundreds of thousand of immigrants that all consume an average of 14,000 Kwh of energy to live in this climate and in the same breath declare that we have to reduce our energy consumption. Are we really that stupid?
Yes .
We are that stupid.
“Reducing our carbon consumption”.
Surrendering to the lie.
Your 11:04 comment..Misses the herd beast aspect.
And personal cost benefit calculation.
With local ,regional and central governments fully infested with utter fools,the only logical response is slide sideways to them.
Prepare for total collapse,because that is where the herd is stampeding.
For you cannot fight city hall and it is foolish to begin unless you are ready to slaughter them all.
Killdozer man times a million.
Face it “Reform” is impossible,because the “authorities” can and do use your time and money to stall and bankrupt you.
There is no consequence for the insanities,other than the tax payers having to pay more.
Obstructive,power hungry morons get promoted.
The entire power structure is set up to protect the bandits.
Government is theft.
But government makes the “laws”.
The cost of compliance now exceeds the possible profits.
The cost of Government exceeds any benefit,even the popular imaginary ones.
Unless we are willing to become barbaric to stop the insane,we can see the civic collapse coming,the only uncertainty is the actual day.
Yet doing what I believe is necessary has a very high cost.
To save an institution that is so rotted that best it fall and the foundations be cleared.
Me and mine are as ready as we can be.
For by my calculation the best thing to do today,is let Gang Green go..full speed ahead.
A much smaller country will result.
One were we can reach out and touch those who demand that “They Shall Rule”.
The problem of any sane or semi sane person,is that we might be wrong.
Our zealots are untroubled by such doubts.
They know ,that they can manage everyone else lives better than those living these lives..
A level of hubris unfathomable by the rest of us..
So of course we get the results you describe..
Because up until recently the cure has been worse than the annoyance.