At 8:30 a.m., Feb. 7, 44 out of 45 wind farms in Alberta could not perform. You are not alone. But there is a solution.
Two gensets in sea cans could have matched the output of Alberta’s entire wind fleet Wednesday morning
We are living in 1979 on the way to 1984
NDP MP Charlie Angus wants to shut down all oil and gas advertising.
In a move that would effectively destroy media like Pipeline Online, EnergyNow.ca, BOE Report, Daily Oil Bulletin and more, Timmins-James Bay NDP MP Charlie Angus on Feb. 6 proposed eliminating all advertising from oil and gas firms. “It is prohibited for a person to promote a fossil fuel, a fossil fuel-related brand element or the production of a fossil fuel except as authorized by the provisions of this Act or of the regulations,” the private members bill, which was just introduced and is not law, says.
Note, this was clearly endorsed by the national party and leader. There’s even a donation collection at the bottom of the press release.
Fines in the million dollar range, jail up to two years. This is what the NDP want of Canada. And I would be going to jail.
To quote Andor, “Fight the Empire!”
A whole lot of experience walking out the door
Four of the Saskatchewan Party’s most experienced cabinet ministers are not seeking re-election.
Tis the season… for no wind
Second day in a row, Alberta’s wind power utterly collapes. Had to relearn how to interpret scientific notation for this one. What does 6.694934166480696e-4 mean? Something like 0.07 per cent of nameplate output? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me 42 times, shame on me, as only 3 of Alberta’s 45 wind farms produced power at points of Monday night
Wind in Alberta bottomed out, yet again, Sunday at suppertime
A few weeks after Alberta’s grid was on the brink, renewables again bottom out, but no crisis this time. Good thing it was -6 C instead of -35 C, eh? And solar didn’t do much either, because a. it snowed and b. the sun went down. Imagine that.
The nuclear renaissance coming to Saskatchewan
Weekend Watch: Juice: Power, Politics & the Grid
This video series is a spectacular take on many of the energy issues of the day. It starts with the February, 2021, Texas blackouts, and goes on to tackle renewable power in the form of wind and solar. It doesn’t speak too fondly of coal, but goes broadly into the adoption of nuclear power. Canada and its experience with nuclear figures heavily into this series, including the influence of Dr. Chris Keefer, a Toronto ER physician who had lead the crusade to bring nuclear power back to the fore. And the series gets into why nuclear all of a sudden is in a renaissance after decades of being in the dumps.
This applies directly to Saskatchewan, where just last week, SaskPower inked a deal with GE Hitachi Canada to continue the development path of small modular reactors. And in that press conference, SaskPower president and CEO Rupen Pandya, when asked by Pipeline Online how many reactors we’re going to build, said Saskatchewan’s grid is expected to grow from 5,400 megawatts currently to 13,000 to 15,000 megawatts by 2050. That’s about 2.5x what it is now. And nuclear appears like it’s going to play a huge part in that. So the issues presented in this series are very topical for this province.
Juice really highlights a lot of the issues Pipeline Online has been focusing on for the last two years. In particular, reliability trumps all, and wind and solar can only be relied upon to be utterly unreliable.
I strongly suggest anyone in the decision chain of Saskatchewan going nuclear – all MLAs, including cabinet and opposition, all executives, board and management of SaskPower, and union leadership and membership, take the time to watch this at some point in the near future. This is the reality Saskatchewan is rapidly heading towards.
This series was put together by Robert Bryce and Tyson Culver. Bryce one of the most astute energy analysts out there. You can follow his Substack at https://robertbryce.substack.com/
This was originally a feature, but broken up into manageable chunks and posted for free on YouTube. Each episode is around 22 minutes long. It’s definitely worth watching all five. All five videos are in the story link above.
We’re going to need a LOT of reactors in Saskatchewan…
SaskPower and GE Hitachi advance small modular reactor plans, but won’t say how many, or how much they’ll cost just yet. Also, SaskPower looking at increasing grid by 2.5x in 25 years and 11 months. Didn’t I just write a column about that earlier this week? Oh yeah. What doubling the grid really means. Also, if you start doing the math, my earlier predictions Saskatchewan will need 15-20 small modular reactors (if not more) is looking pretty much on the money.
What ‘doubling the electrical grid’ really means
Brian Zinchuk: Imagine twinning every highway, grid road, street and alleyway across the country in 25 years. Because that’s what doubling the #grid is going to be equivalent of.
Lithium development in Saskatchewan is getting serious
Lithium in SK, Part 26: Enter the big boys: 70-year-old Denison Mines buys into Grounded Lithium’s Kindersley project
It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine
Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies, human sacrifice, cats and dogs living together, mass hysteria! The meteor is on its way, and CBC just posted a critical story on electric vehicles. Pipeline Online had to share this one. And yes, I borrowed from Ghostbusters there.
In the meanwhile, charging those cars with solar power in Alberta would have been tough on Sunday at noon.
On the topic of cars, a Edmonton-area heavy equipment rental shop took the second largest Caterpillar dozer made and crushed a car with it, just because.
On Friday, the Biden Administration took a shotgun and fired a barrel into each foot of one of the biggest success stories in the American energy industry, one which kept Europe from going dark when the Ukraine war started. And here’s the Whitehouse’s backgrounder on it, verbatim, which reads like a description of how the Biden-Harris administration has applied a knee to the neck of the American energy industry.
(I’m not sure when they started doing this, but the Whitehouse press office continually refers to the Biden-Harris administration. Are they expecting someone to perhaps fall off the ticket between now and November? Like maybe Biden’s health won’t hold out and it’ll be a Harris presidential candidacy?)
Lithium rights – making sure we all make money
A few years ago I realized that there was serious potential for a big conflict between various rights holders of oil, gas, helium, lithium and geothermal. So I started asking hard questions about it. Last year, the Ministry of Energy and Resources got many of the players in a big room with a pile of staff from various ministries to try to sort it all out. This story is a follow up to that process. Note there seems to have been some movement on the helium front last fall which I was not aware of. It will likely end up as a separate story soon.
Also, apparently the royalty for lithium is pegged at 3 per cent.
Lithium in SK Part 25: Primacy of rights, revisited
A lot more news to come on the lithium front. Keep your eyes peeled.
Sunny ways coming to Estevan
What the teachers strike is really about
This Saskatchewan teachers strike is about something no one wants to say openly.
Passing kids who should have failed, mainstreaming everyone, overcrowding and not enough ESL are all part of “classroom complexity.” But we’ve had ample warning this was going to happen, from a guy I’ve known for 30 years. He wrote a book about this in 2010.
Believe it or not, I used to write opinion columns for 28 years on everything under the sun before launching Pipeline Online. And this teachers strike in Saskatchewan got under my skin enough that I had to write about it.
Lithium in Saskatchewan – getting closer to commercialization
Enough of this writing about wind and solar collapsing! Time to get back to some energy stories!
Lithium in SK, Part 24: Hub City Lithium releases preliminary economic assessment for Viewfield project. If it works out, after-tax payout projected in 2.4 years.
Prairie Lithium had some announcements this month and I hope to catch up with them shortly. They released a similar sort of thing. Grounded Lithium had a similar release last summer. That means three players are getting closer to commercialization. As I keep saying, this could be the cusp of a multi-billion dollar industry for Saskatchewan. I sure hope so.
Whatever you think of electric vehicles, someone’s going to make money making those batteries. So we might as well put some of that money in our pockets in Saskatchewan.
And on that front, Ford cut a shift from its F-150 Lightning plant. I sent Ford a long list of questions about how Lightnings perform in -35 C. Let’s see if they respond. What do you think?
Brother, can you spare a dime, I mean a megawatt?
Brian Zinchuk: Alberta won the energy lottery, yet it had to beg its neighbours if they could spare a megawatt.
Also:
Quick Dick McDick goes cooking with The Dam Smokehouse
Notley takes credit for getting rid of coal power, days after the lights almost went out
After a weekend of power shortages, Notley takes credit for getting rid of coal-fired power and building wind and solar. Because of course she did. Not sure when it was filmed, but there wasn’t a hint of shame that she was largely the cause of what happened over the weekend.
Also: Brian Crossman: Magic Eight Ball prediction edition for 2024. “Will the current Prime Minister continue to be a dumpster fire?” “SIGNS POINT TO YES.”
Pour on a little more coal, boys!
The past weekend proved to be a close-run thing for the Alberta electrical grid, and Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe is making statements resolving he won’t allow that to happen here.
Specifically, after having nearly completely divested itself of coal-fired power production, Alberta’s dramatic buildout of wind and solar proved impossible to keep the lights on in that province when the chips were down and temperatures hit -35 C, or worse.
Alberta’s close brush with possible rolling blackouts stiffens Moe’s resolve to keep the lights on. On Monday, he announced that SaskPower has relit a shuttered coal unit near Estevan, one the feds had supposedly forced to retire Dec. 31, 2021.
Also note: Saskatchewan has about a million cars registered. So a good bet is Alberta probably has four million. What would have happened if four million EVs were all plugged in last weekend?
If you missed them, these five stories, in order, chronicle what happened in Alberta.
Most of Alberta’s wind fleet slowly shut down Thursday night, but not for lack of wind
Grid Alert 1:
Alberta goes under grid alert for just under 5 hours on Jan. 12
Grid Alert 2:
Grid Alert 3:
Alberta goes into Round 3, with its third electrical grid alert in three days
Grid Alert 4:
Round 4: Alberta declares fourth electrical grid alert in 4 days, second in 17 hours
Round 4, Fight! Alberta’s fourth grid alert in as many days
Round 4: Alberta declares fourth electrical grid alert in 4 days, second in 17 hours.
It was over in an hour, but The AESO asked Albertans to again conserve power this evening. I’ve got my Round 5 graphic already made.
Round 3, Fight! Alberta spends third evening in danger of blackouts
For the third day in a row, Alberta went into an electrical grid alert on Sunday. At one point it had no contingency reserve left at all, but imports from BC appeared to save the day. While it looked a little hairy there for a bit, there was no emergency alert declared, unlike Saturday.
Did I mention before that Alberta has more coal, oil and natural gas than God? Because guess what? It still does.
Alberta peered into the abyss Saturday evening
Alberta’s electrical grid stood at the brink of blackouts Jan. 13, before pulling back in the nick of time.
It was the second evening in a row Alberta saw “grid alert” issued, but this time, it was a much closer-run thing.
Alberta’s electrical grid was in such peril of falling into rotating blackouts on Saturday night, the provincial government urged people to even turn off their bathroom fans, among other things.
Also, from Western Standard:
STIRLING: When magical thinking meets a polar vortex cold, hard reality follows