Alberta's second grid alert in 2 days leads to rolling blackouts

Rolling blackouts affect Calgary At least nine sites in Calgary were without power at times on Friday due to rolling blackouts. Bill Macfarlane explains.

The Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO) issued another grid alert on Friday, the second in the past two days, and ENMAX says it led them to shut down power to a number of Calgary communities.

As of 6:49 a.m., AESO declared the alert "due to a tight supply."

"Generation is slowly coming online, and we expect conditions to return to normal by 10 a.m.," AESO said.

During a grid alert, Albertans are asked to take energy saving measures such as turning off unnecessary lights and appliances, minimizing use of air conditioners and space heaters and using cold water to wash clothes as much of the energy used in washing machines goes to heating water.

ENMAX reported Friday morning that it had been instructed to put 'rolling blackouts' in place in several Calgary communities to help control power consumption.

As of 10 a.m., calls to ENMAX's info number has a recorded message saying the service is experiencing "a higher than normal call volume" due to the number of communities experiencing power outages.

"ENMAX crews are currently investigating to restore power and quickly and safely as possible," the message said.

'Built the system completely backwards'

Premier Danielle Smith, speaking at a school announcement in Brooks, said the issue in Alberta is that the electricity system's been built to favour renewable sources ahead of fossil fuels.

"We've built a structure that gives priority to wind and solar," she said. "When wind and solar don't materialize, it takes a couple of hours to power up our natural gas (plants).

"We've built the system completely backwards."

Smith says that system needs to be built on "reliable base load power" instead of relying on the forecasts of what wind and solar could generate each day.

Alberta used to have 90 per cent of its power generated by coal generators, Smith said, and it was easier for the system to manage.

With coal out of the picture, Smith said the province is in a balancing act.

"What we're trying to do is match our natural gas to jack up and go down on the basis of whether the sun jacks up and goes down and wind goes up and jacks down.

"It's creating these gaps, which are filled by either higher spikes in prices – and people are seeing that on their power bill – or we're ending up with this system instability."

Smith said the issues Alberta has seen with its grid alerts and brownouts underlines the fact that the province can't build a system that only consists of wind and solar.

"It just isn't possible."

Looking to other jurisdictions

Smith said her government is looking at a number of other options to solve Alberta's power crunch, including the possibility of tapping more heavily into the grids of its neighbours.

"It's not just with B.C., it's also with Saskatchewan and certainly Montana," she said.

However, there is an issue with accessing electricity generated with B.C., Smith said.

"It's not really a fair relationship. When they buy it from us, they buy it at zero power and when we buy it from them, we're competing with California, which can see prices go up to $5,000 per megawatt hour," she said.

"So we don't actually have an agreement with B.C. that would give us priority."

'Unexpected generation loss'

At 8:12 p.m. on Wednesday, the agency said an "unexpected generation loss" also led to a grid alert.

University of Calgary economics professor Blake Shaffer, who worked for a decade and a half as an energy trader, said the province needs a more flexible system, inlcuding pricing that helps shift demand to off-peak hours, so-called "peaker plants" that can provide short-term bursts of power.

He also said the system connecting Alberta's grid to other jurisdictions needs work, both to increase the amount of power that can be brought in, but also the self-imposed price cap that leaves Alberta unable to outbid American states that are sometimes bidding on that same power.

"This is an outage story," Shaffer said. "So what you have right now is you have several large power plants offline for maintenance. The Sheppard gas plant in Calgary, the currently biggest power plant in the province, is offline.

"You had several very large 'baseload power plants' suddenly go offline, over the span of 24 hours," he added, "at different times -- and that is very hard for a grid operator to manage here."

Friday afternoon, AESO said that on Thursday night, they expected to have 800 MW more power than needed, but forecasts changed overnight, and 900 MW of renewable energy didn't come through.

To compound matters, one natural gas plant "tripped" off-line unexpectedly, robbing 400 MW of power from the grid, causing blackouts to ensue.

That all came on top of the fact that the Shepard Power Plant in Calgary, which is the province's largest, was already down for scheduled maintenance.

"We had a bunch of generation that either had some planned outages and others that were just returning to service due to being off yesterday," said AESO vice-president of grid reliability, Marie-France Samaroden. "And so those take a while to ramp up."

AESO said that disruption was caused by a number of factors, but an "unexpected outage of thermal generation led to tight conditions."

A full list of conservation tips can be found on the AESO website.

The Smith government is expected to share further details on electricity agreements with neighbouring jurisdictions in the coming months.