How Alberta can avoid another grid alert

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By Jason Wang and Scott MacDougall

Albertans are not any strangers to the intense chilly. We proudly layer up and don our parkas each winter. Though the newest chilly snap noticed a number of the coldest temperatures within the province in many years, we plowed on. However then our telephones went off. For the primary time, the Authorities of Alberta used its emergency notification system to inform Albertans about an electrical energy grid alert.

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So, what precisely occurred?

Unsurprisingly, the intense chilly introduced extra demand for electrical energy throughout the province: individuals wanted extra warmth for his or her properties as did industrial processes. We set a brand new winter demand document; a pattern pushed by inhabitants progress and rising electrical energy use. Nonetheless, because of households and business shortly decreasing demand, Alberta returned to exporting electrical energy to B.C. and Montana inside two hours.

Alberta is successfully an electrical energy island – distinctive in Canada – with three small interties linking us to B.C., Saskatchewan, and Montana. These neighbouring provinces assist stability our grid and vice versa. Because of this, when Alberta has a surplus of vitality, we are able to export to one in every of these areas the place there could also be a deficit. Throughout that grid alert, we had been on the receiving finish of this balancing act. Upgrading and constructing extra ties to our neighbours allows flexibility and lets us promote extra energy once we can. It permits for us to help each other throughout excessive climate occasions and ensures elevated reliability. Notably, Alberta’s latest progress in wind and photo voltaic property positions the province to develop into a internet exporter of electrical energy.

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One other main subject is that we nonetheless haven’t modernized laws from the times of being depending on centralized, massive coal-fired energy vegetation. For instance, Alberta’s electrical energy market shouldn’t be but formed to acknowledge the essential function of vitality storage. Vitality storage has supplied grids world wide with backup for many years (most notably, pumped hydro services again up massive nuclear vegetation) and battery storage is now financial for backup for the grid and for households. In 2023, Calgary-based Enfinite added a number of new batteries to the grid, and on Jan. 13, these services purchased Alberta a number of extra hours of electrical energy earlier than the alert wanted to be despatched out. If we had extra battery storage, the grid alert possible may have been prevented. In lots of instances, hydro has inherent vitality storage potential, too, so having extra interties with B.C. would assist us use that as properly.

Automating demand-side administration measures is one other regulatory space that Alberta would profit from modernizing. Within the grid message, we had been suggested to delay the usage of main home equipment and switch off pointless ones. Electrical grids world wide are incorporating demand response capabilities that might automate a number of the actions advised. One electrical utility is testing time-of-use charges in Grande Prairie, although Ontario has confirmed for years that this method helps handle the grid.

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Alberta must plan long-term to proactively handle the challenges that can come up in years to come back. Whereas extra fuel era is coming, critical, detailed plans are wanted to abate their emissions. Prioritizing interties and vitality storage are two easy actions Alberta may take instantly to extend grid reliability. Renewables might help, too, by offering further sources of vitality and supporting a better grid. For instance, wind and photo voltaic vitality are fuel-saving, cost-effective applied sciences that may scale back family electrical energy payments by as much as $600 per yr.

Whereas we wanted fuel that Saturday, and there stays a job for fuel with carbon seize applied sciences on a net-zero grid, solar energy supplied substantial electrical energy through the day. Ending the pause on renewable vitality approvals and accelerating their deployment – a number one supply of exterior funding into Alberta – must be a precedence for the federal government.

It’s as much as Alberta to construct a clear, inexpensive, and dependable grid, aligning itself with worldwide requirements and peer jurisdictions. The federal government is aware of most of the options and there’s ample analysis from which they will draw. However the authorities wants to begin appearing on these options fairly than muddling public understanding and politicizing the problem. Alberta must work with different provinces and the federal authorities to create a grid that’s dependable, inexpensive, and clear.

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