Yesterday, the Alberta Electric System Operator published on its website and through its Twitter account that it had issued a grid alert.
The AESO is a not-for-profit organization that works with the provincial government and the corporations providing electricity to manage and operate the power grid in Alberta
They issue grid alerts when the provincial power system is under stress and they are preparing to use emergency reserves to meet demand and maintain system reliability.
Yesterday’s grid alert was actually the second alert AESO issued this week, with the first one going out on just two days before (on the 3rd).
In a media briefing held yesterday, Marie-France Samaroden, AESO’s vice-president of grid reliability operations, spoke about both alerts.
On the 3rd, AESO issued Wednesday’s alert at 19:26. The system had high renewable energy production throughout that day, and they were forecasting high energy production through renewables.
However, according to Samaroden, an “unexpected outage of thermal generation” (electricity provided by either coal of natural gas; although Samaroden confirmed in a question to the media that Alberta has only 1 coal plant at the moment) “led to tight conditions” during peak demand Wednesday evening. This is was triggered the alert.
Eventually, Alberta imported more electricity, which allowed them to address those “tight conditions”, and the alert lasted for a little over an hour.
Unlike the previous gird alert, AESO issued yesterday’s grid alert in the morning, at 06:49 to be precise.
The night before, research that AESO had conducted indicated that the province would have 800 MW of extra electricity supply available yesterday, Samaroden reported that electricity generated by wind power came in at 900 MW less than they had forecasted.
In addition, two hours after AESO issued yesterday’s alert, a thermal generating facility “trip offline” at 08:49. That resulted in the system losing 400 MW.
In response, AESO directed electricity generation to “shed 250 MW of load”, which lasted from 8:53 to 09:16. Samaroden further added that after that, electricity generation began to increase, and the province was back to “normal operations” by 11:00.
She also indicated that multiple generators were “out for planned maintenance”; although it’s not clear why she didn’t lead with this information, how many generators were down, or how much capacity was lost because of their shutdown.
Emma Graney of The Globe and Mail was able to get Samaroden to confirm that the 400 MW “thermal generator” that “tripped” was a natural gas plant, but Samaroden refused to specify which ones because she was concerned with “the market implications” of doing so.
Also in response to Graney, Samaroden indicated that there were additional generators that had been offline for service on Thursday, and production at those facilities had not returned to normal capacity by the time the grid alert had been issued. Once again, she didn’t indicate how many generators were in that boat, what their reduced capacity was, or whether they were the same generators she earlier said were out for planned maintenance.
Sarah Offin from Global News asked Samaroden to clarify how many generators were out for maintenance, but Samaroden avoided answering that question.
This week’s two grid alerts reminded me of another grid alert I was aware of back in January, and it made me wonder how many grid alerts we have seen in Alberta.
So, I searched through AESO’s Twitter account to calculate that number. I decided to start with May 2022, which is when the Electricity Statutes Amendment Act, 2022 came into effect.
The point of the new legislation was to “modernize” the electrical grid in Alberta.
The act integrates new technologies and innovations into Alberta’s electricity system by enabling energy storage, unlimited self-supply with export and help the distribution system plan for electric vehicles, renewable power sources and other distributed energy resources. It also begins the transfer of remaining Balancing Pool responsibilities and prepares for its future dissolution. These developments would help bring long-term savings to the system that will benefit consumers.
Modernizing Alberta’s electricity system is needed to address the changing ways electricity producers and consumers interact with and use Alberta’s power grid. Companies who want to generate their own electricity (self-supply) would be able to export the excess electricity to the grid, while other measures would encourage adoption and investment in emerging energy systems and technologies bringing long-term cost savings for consumers and industry.
Anyhow, here’s what I found.
Assuming I counted correctly, there have been 16 grid alerts published to the AESO’s Twitter account, all of which were published since the Electricity Statutes Amendment Act, 2022 came into effect in May 2022.
In the first 12 months (May 2022 to April 2023) during this period, there were 7 grid alerts. In the second 12-month period (May 2023 to April 2024), there have been 9 alerts.
And April just barely began.
Also of note is that May 2023 was when Lethbridge East MLA Nathan Neudorf became minister of utilities, so the increase in grid alerts over the last 12 months (well, 11 months and a bit) has been under his watch.
In the first year, the average was one grid alert every 8 weeks. Over the past year, it’s become more frequent, increasing to one every 6 weeks, on average.
And that assumes we don’t get any more before the end of this month.
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[…] province has experienced 16 grid alerts since 2022 and the situation has been described as a “lack of reliability.” A report by […]