Publishing date:
Jan 14, 2022 • 9 hours ago • 3 minute read • 117 Comments Photo by Christina Ryan /Postmedia, file
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Old school green activists like Canada’s new Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault fantasize about a world powered by solar and wind energy.
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But just how would that utopian green vision play out during the coldest days of the Canadian winter?
For example, how close would a solar and wind-dependent power grid have come to giving us the electricity we needed during the three-week freeze in Alberta where the average temperature was -22 C from Dec. 15 to Jan. 9?
Alberta sleuth Ian Mackay, an oilfield information technology specialist in Lacombe, has the answer. Mackay scrapes data from the website of the Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO), a not-for-profit organization that manages and works with industry to operate the provincial power grid.
Alberta needs a supply of about 10,500 MW (megawatts) on average, said Mackay. If they are running at maximum capacity, solar can provide 736 MW and wind 2,269 MW.
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Sounds impressive, right? That’s about 30 per cent of Alberta’s electrical power needs. But during Alberta’s recent biting cold days, solar ran at just 2.64 per cent of maximum capacity, the amount each panel would produce if it operated at full efficiency around the clock each day.
As for wind, it ran at 29.5 per cent of maximum capacity.
If we had been reliant on far more solar and wind, how would we have done?
“You’d have to start with rolling blackouts or brownouts,” Mackay said. “If we lost the bulk of our generation, there’d be a lot of people dying.”
But, of course, good, old reliable fossil …….