Alberta turns to natural gas after wind lessens reliability

[Dogmudgeon]

This is a "good news / bad news" kind of story -- Alberta did such a good job installing wind emergy that they have to install more back-up capacity.

On the other hand, natural gas is still a greenhouse gas and produces greenhouse gases.

CALGARY - Alberta power utility Enmax Corp. said yesterday it is building a huge new power station in Southern Alberta fired with natural gas, partly to help boost the provincial grid's reliability after Alberta's aggressive expansion into wind energy made it vulnerable to power disruption.

"We now have so much windpower generation that we need to fall back on reliable sources of power," said Peter Hunt, an Enmax spokesman.

"The problem with wind power is that the wind doesn't blow all the time, so the greater percentage of the system depends on wind, the more vulnerable to disruption the system becomes when the wind stops blowing."

The 1,200-megawatt station, which industry sources say would cost about $2-billion, would produce enough power to supply two-thirds of Calgary's needs.

...

While environmentally friendly, the typical wind farm in Southern Alberta can harvest wind only 35% of the time.

(More at Canada.com National and Financial Post

Which brings me to my other point, that there is always a fly in the ointment, and the sooner we realize that it won't be All Good News All The Time, the less damage we will do. So congratulations to Alberta -- and good luck!

--p!

[wakeme2008]

1. Right like with Solar a backup source is still required

but the more energy that you can supply with wind/solar the better the planet will be :)

[eagler]

2. It may also have something to do with the oil boom going on

in Alberta and the politics is sharply turning to the right.

[NNadir]

3. One wonders if wind advocates will include this plant in the cost of wind power.

Probably not.

[phantom power]

4. Yes, one does wonder.

[GliderGuider]

5. This one doesn't n/t

[Dogmudgeon]

6. It's endemic

The only form of power generation that is scrutinized from A to Z is nuclear power, yet the mythology about it persists, and very little effort is put into learning about it.

The so-called "green" sources of energy are almost entirely unscrutinized. Solar energy is regularly presented as being 100% "clean" -- not counting the environmental costs of semiconductor manufacture. Ditto for the wind, except if you live within the acoustic "footprint" of those 190-foot-long blades. And the generators on top of the 300-foot-high pylons are the equivalent of half a dozen trucks or jumbo jet turbines, requiring some serious industrial metallurgy. I myself overlooked the downside of biofuels for years, until the reality that ethanol production was being pursued in a malignant way bit me in the ass. I advocate for all these sources of energy, but I'm increasingly aware of their "good news / bad news" aspects. It's universal.

There are risks and costs to all forms of energy production -- that's almost a truism, but it's absent in most public discussions of energy except to damn nuclear power (risks only) and to sell all things "green" (benefits only). If we had a truly intellectually self-directed populace, we would consider all risks and benefits, as a whole, and make informed choices. We would understand what kinds of failures we had to prepare for and what kind of messes we needed to clean up in any pursuit. But as one of the anti-nuclearists posted a few hours ago, energy policy is dictated at least in part by "cool".

I'm not even out to convince the world of the necessity of nuclear power at this point. Just to get people away from the obsession with tribal acceptability would be a start. I could deal with proposals to build 1.5 million one-megawatt wind units (just in the USA), but I've never heard it spoken of. It would very likely be an environmental disaster, but it would provide us with all the electricity we use now. Few understand how really, really, really much energy we consume, and fewer still realize that abruptly cutting down to fit their Arcadian fantasies wouldn't lead to a 60s-style utopia, but to universal economic and social collapse and mass misery. To many, we are simply white, fat, fashion-impaired SUV drivers who live on burgers and TV -- as atrocious a stereotype as Stepin Fetchit or Jud Süß.

This is a frustrating issue. We are literally in a position where we are obliged to rebuild our entire civilization, and we have a choice between doing it the easy way (with a generational reconstruction effort and long-range profits for all) or the hard way (collapse and die-off, followed by a generational reconstruction effort with no hope of return on investment). Too many of us think of it in terms of Boomer stereotypes instead of reality. It's nearly as bad as the way Freepers "think". And most of the time, I wonder if I have my own head on straight.

--p!

[NNadir]

7. Wind energy generally has as low, and often lower external cost than

nuclear energy, which makes wind a very desirable form of energy. Of course the external cost of nuclear energy is so low, that it is, in fact, trivial. I am not sure though, that these external cost calculations for wind include back up. If wind is backed up by gas, than it's not such a good environmental deal either. I'm sure, in fact, they don't.

Of course nuclear is (and should be perceived as such by a rational media and a rational public, not to say that there is a rational media and a rational public) as a world standard for safety, since it is on an exajoule scale, and injures few people, and in most years, zero people. It is without question the "greenest" form of energy there is, but it is not risk free. Neither, as you point out, is the absence of energy risk free.

There have been many studies to try to determine why so many public attitudes fly in the face of easily verifiable facts, but it is difficult at the end of the day to understand it.

[phantom power]

8. The thing about wind is...

to generate practical energy (by which I mean reliable, I guess: it's there when you want it, even on calm days) you have to do one of 3 things:

1) build very widely distributed and redundant wind-farms, combined with all the new grid infrastructure to support them. In this way, you may be able to rely on there being sufficient wind somewhere, and the grid to pipe it where it's needed.

2) build multiple terawatt-hours of storage. The most cost effective option there seems to be flow-cells.

3) build fossil backup.


Any one of these options adds major external and/or internal costs.

[GliderGuider]

10. There's one thing that concerns me about your first option

A system of widely distributed wind farms tied together by a new-generation smart grid is insufficiently resilient because it is so large and interconnected. If we head into a period of energy reduction characterized by periodic system shocks, the last thing you want is such a brittle system. You need a system that is decoupled into regional or local components to decrease the risk of failure cascades. If the reason for building out a whole new generating and distribution system is fossil fuel depletion, then your third option is "less attractive". Realistically that leaves only option 2: regional micro-grids consisting of small numbers of wind farms with flow cells or pumped storage for supply management.

And lots and lots of conservation.

[phantom power]

11. I consider option-2 to be the only practical one.

option 3 is a non-starter, since fossil fuels are going to kill us. I don't think opion 1 gives "5-nines" reliability. Mostly, I was enumerating the ways that wind power is more expensive than is usually accounted for.

[razzleberry]

9. the problem is the summer months with no wind

100 percent conventional backup will be needed
in the vast majority of cases.

IMO, wind will never be more than, avoided cost for,
diesel or natural gas.

[jpak]

12. In the summer, large scale PV backed by nighttime biomass (prairie grass) generators as well as

V flow batteries, hydrogen fuel cells and flywheel storage systems can balance seasonal and diel trends in wind and insolation.

No need for 100% conventional backup...

[jpak]

13. Ummm....

The OP states that wind supplies only 4% of *southern* Alberta's electricity and implies that this has left the Alberta grid "vulnerable to disruption".

Really???

The Electric Power Research Institute and several independent academic studies have concluded that intermittent power supplies (wind and solar) will not "disrupt" grid management until intermittent renewable capacity comprises 20-25% of total grid capacity.

So how can 4% wind generation "disrupt" the Alberta grid???

It can't.

And why does one need a 1200 MW gas-fired power plant to back up Alberta's wind power capacity when Alberta's wind power capacity is only 383 MW????

You don't.

http://www.canwea.ca/production_stats.cfm

So why is wind power a "problem" in Alberta???

It ain't.

Is this 1200 MW gas-fired power plant related in any way to the McKenzie Gas Pipeline Project????

Yup.

Gee - didn't see that mentioned in the OP.

Nice try though...

[jpak]

14. That should read MacKenzie Gas Project

http://www.mackenziegasproject.com/theProject/index.html

my bad