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For the first time in more than 150 years, Alberta's electricity is coal free

theglobeandmail.com

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Re: For the first time in more than 150 years, Alberta's electricity is coal free

#41

Post by adrianN »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #14
MisterDizzy wrote: post #8

Let's see how long it takes them to realize they should have gone with the latest nuclear power tech and will eventually be unable to meet demand with anything but coal or nuclear (unless something changes).

I'm wondering what scenario you're considering that natural gas won't suffice but coal will. Alberta is celebrating simply transitioning from one fossil fuel to another, slightly cleaner burning, one. They are certainly still struggling with renewables when they are needed the most, such as -35 at 7PM, long after the sun has gone down and the wind turbine's hydraulics are too cold to function safely and all our furna…

Why would you let your hydraulics freeze?

Re: For the first time in more than 150 years, Alberta's electricity is coal free

#42

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

adrianN wrote: post #38
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like this idea, but I disagree with this: > It's cheaper to size production for winter sunshine than to build a lot of storage. This still doesn't work - storage is mandatory. Winter peak loads, which are often the most power that the grid will require all year, are before and after the sun.

There’s a huge difference between load shifting a couple of hours and seasonal storage

That's why I didn't specify it needed to be seasonal, but it does need to be stored, as a lot of that load isn't shifting. At 7pm on a -35 day there is zero solar generation, but every furnace in the province is on and people are doing their evening cooking and cleaning.

Re: For the first time in more than 150 years, Alberta's electricity is coal free

#43

Post by tossstone »

TheRealPomax wrote: post #17
MisterDizzy wrote: post #8

Let's see how long it takes them to realize they should have gone with the latest nuclear power tech and will eventually be unable to meet demand with anything but coal or nuclear (unless something changes).

You... know how big Alberta is, right? It's twice the size of Germany/the same size as Texas, with a population of only a little over 4 million, with a pretty much linear trend in population for several decades now, so you're going to have to do a bit more work if you want to make the argument that they're going to run out of the power necessary to serve the province any time soon.

Alberta’s population growth trend in the last 5 years is anything but linear. It has accelerated significantly driven in large part by new to Canada immigrants and those escaping higher cost of living provinces like BC and ON.

Source: https://www.alberta.ca/population-statistics

Re: For the first time in more than 150 years, Alberta's electricity is coal free

#44

Post by _aavaa_ »

lbrito wrote: post #24
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alberta. Ontario and even Quebec and maybe BC actually have industry.

It's a high share on Alberta, but definitively not close to "the entire economy" According to the most recent Statistics Canada's National Economic Accounts, the Mining and Oil and Gas Extraction industry accounted for approximately 26% of Alberta's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2020, an increase from 23.3% in 2010.

However that 23.3% undersells its importance. Primary industries like mining, oil and gas extraction have large knock on effects on the rest of the economy. Many of the retail and service companies would go out of business if the fossil fuel industry were to disappear overnight.

Re: For the first time in more than 150 years, Alberta's electricity is coal free

#45

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

adrianN wrote: post #41
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm wondering what scenario you're considering that natural gas won't suffice but coal will. Alberta is celebrating simply transitioning from one fossil fuel to another, slightly cleaner burning, one. They are certainly still struggling with renewables when they are needed the most, such as -35 at 7PM, long after the sun has gone down and the wind turbine's hydraulics are too cold to function safely and all our furna…

Why would you let your hydraulics freeze?

Sorry, I did some research, it's not just hydraulics, but at below -30 materials experience significant changes in strength and many become brittle and prone to breaking, demanding that they be shut down.

My mechanic father has a saying - badly maintained stuff breaks down at -30 C, but everything can break at -40 C.

Re: For the first time in more than 150 years, Alberta's electricity is coal free

#46

Post by mthoms »

soperj wrote: post #22
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alberta. Ontario and even Quebec and maybe BC actually have industry.

BC has Coal as it's number 1 export, and logging a close second.

“Almost all of the thermal coal Canada produces comes from coal mines in Alberta and is exported, mainly to Asia, from ports in B.C.”

https://globalnews.ca/news/10392382/canada-coal-exports/

Re: For the first time in more than 150 years, Alberta's electricity is coal free

#47

Post by bryanlarsen »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #42
adrianN wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a huge difference between load shifting a couple of hours and seasonal storage

That's why I didn't specify it needed to be seasonal, but it does need to be stored, as a lot of that load isn't shifting. At 7pm on a -35 day there is zero solar generation, but every furnace in the province is on and people are doing their evening cooking and cleaning.

You're right, you said "as much storage as production". That's actually a very tiny amount of storage. Generally a "24hr" solar plant for California usage patterns has about 4-6Wh of storage and about 1W of discharge per watt of solar plant. Alberta will likely need ~2X that for daily load shifting during the winter. Seasonal storage would require a couple of orders of magnitude more.

Re: For the first time in more than 150 years, Alberta's electricity is coal free

#48

Post by _aavaa_ »

mminer237 wrote: post #10
silverquiet wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Methane burned for electricity is better than coal no doubt. But methane that escapes into the atmosphere is way worse than CO2 in the nearish term. And not every extraction company is super thrilled about proper containment.

A very small percent is not contained though, and even most vented is flared.

Most of the consciously vented is flared. However, the infrastructure leaks like mad and there have been no incentives incentive for the companies to fix it, it's a cheap invisible gas after all with almost all reporting being self reporting.

Re: For the first time in more than 150 years, Alberta's electricity is coal free

#49

Post by jfim »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #26
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. The times they are a-changing, but we have a particularly regressive government at the moment that is actively blocking renewable production. The unfortunate bit about having the most sun is that during winter we still don't get much of it. It seems to me we need as much storage as we do production.

Alberta isn't very cloudy in the wintertime, the reduced insolation is mostly due to lower angles and shorter days. AFAICT, winter sunshine is more than a third of summer sunshine in Alberta. In Europe the number is often 10%. It's cheaper to size production for winter sunshine than to build a lot of storage. AKA it's cheaper to put down 3X as many panels than to build seasonal storage. Alberta doesn't lack for hills…

> Alberta doesn't lack for hills, which is what's needed to build pumped storage which is what's cheapest for seasonal storage.

From what I understand, BC has a lot of hydro dams. I wonder if there is a way to use them for pumped storage.

Re: For the first time in more than 150 years, Alberta's electricity is coal free

#50

Post by Teever »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #30

ElectricityMaps zone CA-AB: https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/CA-AB?wind=false&solar=... Total fossil gas generation capacity is ~12.7GW. Seems straightforward to replace with solar, wind, batteries, and interconnects with neighboring grids. Wind and Solar Potential resource: https://www.pembina.org/pub/wind-solar-alberta

It seems straightforward but it isn't.

Alberta is about twice the size of Germany, 50% larger than California and has a meager population of 4.3 million spread out across that area.With a latitude that ranges from 48' to 60' and a wide variety of geography there's a range of availability in solar and wind.

Alberta politics is also a factor.

Alberta is a complete aberration in North American democracy in that more or less one party have been in power there for over 50 years. While the party has always been blatantly pro O&G industry at the expense of everything else when they issued an unexpected moratorium on a solar and wind projects last year.

This has thrown the renewable industry in Alberta into chaos and has likely damaged investor confidence in Alberta for decades[0]

https://www.theenergymix.com/tsunami-engulfs-alberta-renewab...

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