Alberta Power News Round Up – August 8th, 2017
- Samantha Hoffman, P.Eng.
- Sep 20, 2017
- 2 min read
Alberta News
Micro-Generation
The AESO released their latest report on micro-generation in Alberta.
It has been steadily growing in the last five years. However, it still represents a tiny proportion of generating capacity in Alberta: ~20MW compared to the available supply which on a typical day is between 10,500 and 12,000 MW.
The reason that AESO is taking an increased interest in micro-generation is that it is expected to become increasingly prevalent as solar and wind energy becomes cheaper for everyday Albertans to install and as the government creates incentives to promote this.
Micro-generation is considered anything under 5MW. At present, solar represents, by far, the largest share of micro-generation in Alberta.
NID Filed for New Wind Farm Around Irma Alberta
The AESO has filed a NID to the AUC connect a new 90MW wind farm east of Edmonton close to the town of Irma.
The purpose of the NID is to justify to new transmission (high voltage) equipment that will be needed to connect the wind farm to the grid. It is expected the development will cost 18 million.
It is expected the development will cost 18 million.
Keephills 2 Shut Down Causes Huge Power Price Spike
This is old news now, but on July 26th, Keephills 2 tripped offline and another coal plant followed. This caused a large spike in the power price.
The Pembina Institute wrote a great piece describing why baseload is not synonymous with reliability and why a better approach is diversification of our generating assets.
Canadian and World News
Energy Storage Projects in Canada
Energy Insider released a great article detailing energy storage projects in North America.
Energy storage is critical to the integration of renewables as their power output cannot be controlled as is possible with traditional generation: coal, gas and hydro.
The energy storage market share is expected to increase by ten fold over the next five years as costs decrease and governments provide financial incentives.
The projects are still relatively small with the largest in Canada being done at Powin Energy with a capacity of 13MW. The units will also be used for frequency regulation, voltage control, and reactive power support.
Solar Eclipse Not Expected to Impact the North American Grid
NERC released a report stating that they do not expect the solar eclipse will impact the North American bulk electric system.
The biggest impact during solar eclipses is typically a loss of load as people leave their work to watch the event. However, solar generation is also impacted.
As operators have significant time to prepare for the event and time that is will take place is well-known, NERC does not expect there to be a negative impact. But North America will experience another eclipse in seven years on April 8, 2024. More solar power will be part of the system by this time and this eclipse could have a greater impact on the grid.
Comments