pipes
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I don't know the numbers, All I know is it created some extra work for operations.
Alberta grid alerts
- Thread starter jhurkot
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zal
Active VIP Member
Not sure yet Aaron. They had a second presentation with the Town 2 weeks ago.
NoBrakes!
Active VIP Member
Interesting, it’s been years since I heard a boo about it. The original complaint was highways in/out I thought? They need big heavy haul roads to bring construction mods in? Then dangerous good routes after in/out?
zal
Active VIP Member
I’m not sure why they dropped it.
I have found nothing about this latest one using Google, but if you look at the town minutes, it’s there.
I have found nothing about this latest one using Google, but if you look at the town minutes, it’s there.
tmo1620
Active VIP Member
I wasn’t referring to the one day shortage, more the last 2-3 years of instability that is getting worse every year. Our grid used to be able to handle a plant going down unexpectedly, can’t anymore
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jhurkot
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ABMax24
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IMO it was a mistake to convert the coal thermal units to natural gas. They should have been left on coal to the 2030 phase out date at which point they would be scrapped and combined cycle natural gas should have been built in their place starting 5 years ago.
Thermal plants are suited to coal, as there's really no other way to burn coal and make electricity. However their startup times are measured in hours, and operate best as baseload capacity. They simply lack the reaction time to pair well with renewables, other than on a predictable basis such as day turning to night and vice versa. Now we have a fleet of thermal plants that can operate well past 2030 on natural gas, that do very little to help absorb fast changes in demand or in fluctuations in renewables generation.
Natural gas combined cycle plants have a much quicker reaction time, many of the new turbines can cold start and ramp up to about 65% capacity in under 15 minutes, and the steam turbine comes on within an hour in many of these designs achieving 100% capacity at that time. Far quicker than thermal plants. The gas turbines achieve about 40% thermal efficiency, which is very similar to the thermal plants, but once the steam turbine comes online that efficiency increases to over 60%. These are the perfect setup, they can be both baseload and peak power for the province.
There will also be need for other fasting acting generation, which can be supplied by simple cycle gas turbines, and some exist in the province already. ATCO has a few that have 5 minute response time to go from cold start to WFO.
Pumped hydro is also a solution in the works, TransCanada is building a pumped hydro facility near Hinton that will buy cheap excess power and store it and provide fast response generation for times of need.
The grid batteries will help fill in the gaps, and I'd almost certainly expect more to come online in the next 5 years.
At this point the best thing we can do is keep politicians out of the electricity market, their job is to get power projects of all kinds approved as fast as possible and let the free-market dictate what generation gets built. The thermal powerplants will eventually become stranded assets this way, as they can't be cost competitive with combined cycle plants that consume 1/3 less fuel to generate the same amount of electricity. Which will mean more reliable and affordable electricity for all. Renewables will play a part in this, but I think we're approaching a point of saturation in that market, as there will be times when the energy production will be curtailed to maintain grid stability and prevent over-generation.
Thermal plants are suited to coal, as there's really no other way to burn coal and make electricity. However their startup times are measured in hours, and operate best as baseload capacity. They simply lack the reaction time to pair well with renewables, other than on a predictable basis such as day turning to night and vice versa. Now we have a fleet of thermal plants that can operate well past 2030 on natural gas, that do very little to help absorb fast changes in demand or in fluctuations in renewables generation.
Natural gas combined cycle plants have a much quicker reaction time, many of the new turbines can cold start and ramp up to about 65% capacity in under 15 minutes, and the steam turbine comes on within an hour in many of these designs achieving 100% capacity at that time. Far quicker than thermal plants. The gas turbines achieve about 40% thermal efficiency, which is very similar to the thermal plants, but once the steam turbine comes online that efficiency increases to over 60%. These are the perfect setup, they can be both baseload and peak power for the province.
There will also be need for other fasting acting generation, which can be supplied by simple cycle gas turbines, and some exist in the province already. ATCO has a few that have 5 minute response time to go from cold start to WFO.
Pumped hydro is also a solution in the works, TransCanada is building a pumped hydro facility near Hinton that will buy cheap excess power and store it and provide fast response generation for times of need.
The grid batteries will help fill in the gaps, and I'd almost certainly expect more to come online in the next 5 years.
At this point the best thing we can do is keep politicians out of the electricity market, their job is to get power projects of all kinds approved as fast as possible and let the free-market dictate what generation gets built. The thermal powerplants will eventually become stranded assets this way, as they can't be cost competitive with combined cycle plants that consume 1/3 less fuel to generate the same amount of electricity. Which will mean more reliable and affordable electricity for all. Renewables will play a part in this, but I think we're approaching a point of saturation in that market, as there will be times when the energy production will be curtailed to maintain grid stability and prevent over-generation.
tmo1620
Active VIP Member
To keep the answer short and leaving out technical details…….Stop wasting massive amounts of money on wind power and put it into reliable forms of power ie: combine cycle units, eliminate the carbon tax, eliminate the years of red tape you have to go through to build pipelines to all the proposed Combined cycle units they have planned to build. Get serious about nuclear power. Some things they shouldn’t have done are now done so we’re stuck… ie: converting all the coal units to gas fired steam. And stop pushing everyone to buy gay electric cars, our grid can’t support it currently
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06 Dragon
Active VIP Member
If the grid is overloaded, the first thing that should be shut down is power to all parliament buildings in Canada. Then work their way down through all the other provincial buildings. After all they don’t earn any money, they just take it away from folks.
Lightningmike
Active VIP Member
Gonna state the missed obvious here.... natural gas is natural..... it comes naturally from the earth to help sustain the earth. Why the fack do people think they are above mother nature and the almighty? If he didn't think it would help us it wouldn't be available. Don't get me wrong I am not a Bible worshiper but I have read most of it and there is a reason it is a thing.
ABMax24
Active VIP Member
Sour gas (H2S) is natural too, probably a terrible idea to let that escape and have plumes of it rolling across the landscape though.
zal
Active VIP Member
Depending on where you release it and who it hits.
- Thread starter
- #54
jhurkot
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I'd agree with most of that. As far as "gay electric cars", what happens when they all have V2G capability and can be leveraged to supply the grid in times of stress? We know that a cars utilization is like 5-10% for most people. How much of this is mismanagement by the AESO? The pool price can't fluctuate between $0 and $999.99/MWh. Nuclear power is very expensive initially and takes a long time to get up and running as far as construction time. I don't know, maybe smaller scale reactors can be deployed in a faster manner. If you expect your province to grow economically that means that you want more jobs, more people to come here, places for them to live, and energy for them to use. The province can never grow with energy poverty. There is no reason we can't have abundant energy and supply the neighbouring provinces instead of being energy beggars.
- Thread starter
- #55
jhurkot
Active VIP Member
Should Alberta implement time of use billing?
If we were a smart society, we would put people like yourself in charge of decisions in their area of expertise. The improvement to our country as a whole would be astounding.
snopro
Active VIP Member
Looks to me we are a long ways away from the electrification of our transportation system. We can’t even provide heat in a cold snap or cool in a warm spell. I think it’s fair to say the left is clueless.
ABMax24
Active VIP Member
I think for simplicity a blanket rate like is used today needs to be available for residential and commercial consumers. However, there could be benefits to allowing some consumers to switch to a time of use structure, such as those with EV's, microgeneration, or large commercial consumers that possess the ability to load shift to off-peak hours. I just don't know if these time of use rates should be fixed rates or if they should be variable and tied to hourly AESO Pool prices, personally I lean toward the latter.
I'm skeptical it can be done effectively though, the only proposal for time of use rates I've seen was from ATCO, and they only wanted the rates to apply to distribution fees. It worked out to something like a half cent per kwh credit at all hours except from 5-9pm, but then they charged a 3 cent premium at those times. Really it wasn't going to do anything other than line ATCO's pockets, the average residential consumer would end up with a larger bill under that system.
I don't think time of use billing will have that great of an effect on the entire grid, residential is really the only consumers that will load shift and they make up such a small portion of demand compared to other places like California.
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