[bootlegga]

$1:

I know irony's almost the default perspective for looking at the world today, but news that Alberta was hit by rolling blackouts on Monday most definitely rates as ironic.

Residents of Canada's energy capital found themselves sweating in the dark after high electricity demand combined with power-generation problems left thousands of Albertans temporarily without power.

The incident, just as the Calgary Stampede gets rolling, had Alberta Energy Minister Ken Hughes demanding an explanation and opposition MLAs calling for a full investigation, the Calgary Herald reported.

Officials know what happened, just not how circumstances conspired to force the institution of rolling blackouts to avoid a complete crash of Alberta's power grid.

Hughes confirmed four coal-burning power plants went down Monday and (if you want more irony) there was no wind to power the province's wind turbines.

"Oh, I'll be getting an explanation. I just don't have it in hand right now," Hughes told the Herald.

TransAlta Utilities' Sundance 3 plant had been out of commission since last Friday. Then early Monday morning, Atco Power's Battle River No. 5 plant went down, followed in the afternoon by TransAlta's Keephills 1, Capital Power's Genesee 2 and Atco Power's Joffre CT201 plants, the Edmonton Journal said.

Capital Power said its plant suffered an instrument malfunction and shut down automatically but was back in operation by late Monday afternoon. Its three natural-gas fired plants were switched on immediately, replacing some of the power, but not enough to make up for the loss of the other three plants.

"When Genesee went down, and with the other plants off, the province was short 1,200-MW of power," Capital spokesman Michael Sheehan, told the Journal.

Atco Power spokesman Paul Wright said the company's not sure what went wrong at its plant.

"We are still assessing the situation there, but this unit is the newest and largest at Battle River," he told the Journal.

Hot weather boosts demands for refrigeration and air conditioning, leading to a supply imbalance that has prompted the Alberta Electric System Operator, which manages the provincial grid, to call for cuts in usage in a news release Monday afternoon.

But that didn't prevent the need to order power cuts across the province, including in Calgary and Edmonton, which came without warning.

"That's the nature of electricity services, that capacity comes on and goes off the system without much notice, so one will seldom get notice of a shortage of capacity," said Hughes.

"You can anticipate scheduled outages, you can anticipate high demand on a hot day, but what we couldn't anticipate was there would be a combination of a number of facilities going down and the wind not blowing all at the same time."

Hughes called the rolling blackouts, only the second such incident in Alberta in 10 years, bad timing. But the official opposition said it's evidence the Progressive Conservative government has mismanaged the Alberta's deregulated energy market.

Wildrose MLA Joe Anglin pointed to reports in the past of power companies triggering "unexpected" shutdowns to reduce supply and spike electricity prices.

The Journal noted that last fall TransAlta was fined $370,000 after admitting it manipulated electricity prices by blocking cheaper hydro power imports from British Columbia for a couple of days in 2010. The resultant artificial power shortage cost Alberta electricity consumers an extra $5.5 million.

NDP MLA Rachel Notley said re-regulating the electricity market would reduce opportunities for such manipulation.

But Hughes said these appear to have been legitimate outages.

"Everybody in the system would know that if there is any evidence of any deliberate effort to manipulate the system, that would be treated very seriously," he said.

CBC News reported that power was restored in Calgary late Monday afternoon and in Edmonton a couple of hours later.

Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi said he was told the rolling blackouts were necessary because there was "great concern that would bring the entire power grid down."

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/dailybre ... 42377.html

[DrCaleb]

More proof that essential services should not be profit motivated. If that had happened in winter, people could die.

And the bullshit about needing more transmission lines just pisses me off. If there's no electricity, the lines would be both useless and a waste of taxpayer money used to give more profit to private corporations.

[Curtman]

$1:

The Journal noted that last fall TransAlta was fined $370,000 after admitting it manipulated electricity prices by blocking cheaper hydro power imports from British Columbia for a couple of days in 2010. The resultant artificial power shortage cost Alberta electricity consumers an extra $5.5 million.

Hrmmm... However this is possible should be fixed, right away. Hydro should be preferred to burning fossil fuels for electricity.

[SprCForr]

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

More proof that essential services should not be profit motivated. If that had happened in winter, people could die.

And the bullshit about needing more transmission lines just pisses me off. If there's no electricity, the lines would be both useless and a waste of taxpayer money used to give more profit to private corporations.

Exactly, all the furnaces that run during winter don't cause a demand problem so what the hell?

[Freakinoldguy]

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

More proof that essential services should not be profit motivated. If that had happened in winter, people could die.

They can die in summer just as well Doc. Take a look south of the border.

[saturn_656]

SprCForr SprCForr:

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

More proof that essential services should not be profit motivated. If that had happened in winter, people could die.

And the bullshit about needing more transmission lines just pisses me off. If there's no electricity, the lines would be both useless and a waste of taxpayer money used to give more profit to private corporations.

Exactly, all the furnaces that run during winter don't cause a demand problem so what the hell?

I'd guess that natural gas fueled furnaces are more prevalent than electric heat, which makes sense giving the rocketing prices of hydro.

I use natural gas to heat my house (if the furnace bites it, I have electic baseboard, if that bites it I have a woodstove), if I was forced to use electric my costs would double... at least.

[DrCaleb]

Freakinoldguy Freakinoldguy:

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

More proof that essential services should not be profit motivated. If that had happened in winter, people could die.

They can die in summer just as well Doc. Take a look south of the border.

True enough, but in either extreme if you are unprepared it can lead to bad things. We don't get the kind of heat they do, but we wonder how they can get so many deaths when the temp falls to just below freezing. Which is a nice winters day here.

But there is not a lot of time to change your shelter if you lose power at -40.

saturn_656 saturn_656:

I'd guess that natural gas fueled furnaces are more prevalent than electric heat, which makes sense giving the rocketing prices of hydro.

I use natural gas to heat my house (if the furnace bites it, I have electic baseboard, if that bites it I have a woodstove), if I was forced to use electric my costs would double... at least.

I use NG for most everything too, but I had to get a special backup generator that could handle my furnace. Not too many can supply 120V @ 30A!

[SprCForr]

The blowers on every single furnace is consuming electricity as well and that number far outstrips the ac units that would be running. The little electric supplementary heaters, the electric stoves cooking hot meals, the length of time all the lights stay on.

My point is blaming the shortage in summer on ac is a crutch used to push for higher prices by providers, avoid action by politicans, and change to our lives IAW a groups particular agenda.

[bootlegga]

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

More proof that essential services should not be profit motivated. If that had happened in winter, people could die.

And the bullshit about needing more transmission lines just pisses me off. If there's no electricity, the lines would be both useless and a waste of taxpayer money used to give more profit to private corporations.

[AdamF]

$1:

And the bullshit about needing more transmission lines just pisses me off. If there's no electricity, the lines would be both useless and a waste of taxpayer money used to give more profit to private corporations.

But there is plenty of capacity in the BC, Saskatchewan and the US. Except that the 571MW line to BC and 51MW line to SK can only do so much.

$1:

My point is blaming the shortage in summer on ac is a crutch used to push for higher prices by providers, avoid action by politicans, and change to our lives IAW a groups particular agenda.

But electric demand really does peak on very hot summer afternoons. While heaters also tend to increase demand, they tend to run most during cold nights when other demand is fairly low.

$1:

More proof that essential services should not be profit motivated.

I agree in general, but why should this particular incident be blamed on profit motive?

[DrCaleb]

AdamF AdamF:

$1:

More proof that essential services should not be profit motivated.

I agree in general, but why should this particular incident be blamed on profit motive?

Any critical system needs redundancy. Because 6 generators went offline, and there were no spare ones to take over the load, because 'hot standbys' don't make money. As a result AUC had to ask the power companies to cause blackouts to lower demand.

EPCOR/ATCO/ENMAX all used to have some spare capacity built in to systems so that others could be taken offline for regular maintanence. They've put off building spare capacity, instead they put all generators into service to take up the slack and have many times run into a situation where all generators were at capacity and the spot price for power hit the legislated maximum of $1000 kW/h.

It's suspicious. So was Edmonton City council's move to transfer EPCOR's assets to a public, for profit, corporation. But that's a whole other thread.

[peck420]

SprCForr SprCForr:

My point is blaming the shortage in summer on ac is a crutch used to push for higher prices by providers, avoid action by politicans, and change to our lives IAW a groups particular agenda.

Yes and no.

A lot of people have their furnace fans running during the summer plus a portable AC unit or two. You can actually cool your house quite a bit just by forcing the cooler basement air to the upper levels, windows open at top for exhaust (until warmer air has been forced out), basement window closest to furnace open to supplement intake (only really necessary if you don't have a make up line that should be standard in any house 1990+).

It's cheaper for me to run my portable AC unit into my furnace duct work and run the furnace fan, than it is to have multiple portables or to upgrade to a built in AC.

Doesn't excuse this at all though. We have the excess capacity to handle it if all generators are operational.

[SprCForr]

peck420 peck420:

Doesn't excuse this at all though. We have the excess capacity to handle it if all generators are operational.

That's the bottom line right there.

[peck420]

You know what really gets my goat about this?

The fact that the Alberta government will not raise the amount of home power generation to the point where the average Albertan could at least break even doing it.

We wouldn't have crap like this in less than a decade with that simple rule change. And the EPCRAP's of the world would have excess power to sell however they want.

But, no....god forbid they give us a smidgen of self determination and sufficiency.

[Curtman]

SprCForr SprCForr:

The blowers on every single furnace is consuming electricity as well and that number far outstrips the ac units that would be running. The little electric supplementary heaters, the electric stoves cooking hot meals, the length of time all the lights stay on.

My point is blaming the shortage in summer on ac is a crutch used to push for higher prices by providers, avoid action by politicans, and change to our lives IAW a groups particular agenda.

Your furnace fan is a 120v, 1/3 or 1/2 HP motor. It runs winter and summer. Summer you have that plus a 240v fan and a compressor outside. That's a lot more electricity.