I'm still not certain of what the surprise was. Sundance 6 has been offline for a while. The day before they were comfortable there was 400 MW (maybe a couple of hours 200-400), but the loss of one 300 MW gas plant sent the market soaring - and that Milner unit actually returned to service a few hours into the alert.
There are long duration storage technologies in the early stages of commercialization. Potential solutions for these winter peaks in demand and summer peaks going forward, in Alberta.
Thanks to you and the students for this post and all previous posts!
Not up to speed on Canadian power but I have a few questions below that are related to the above.
- what is happening to spot power powers? You show gas spike but does gas set the price in Alberta markets? (Presume it does a fair amount of the time, especially in winter?)
- what sort of reserve power exists in AB? Are these mostly peakers - ocgts or recips?
- what interconnection is there between BC and SK? Is this spilling over?
- when AB is tight, are the neighbouring provinces even tighter than AB?
I thought the reason renewables were bad was because gas generation couldn’t be ramped up quickly to deal with these situations. Guess not.
I'm still not certain of what the surprise was. Sundance 6 has been offline for a while. The day before they were comfortable there was 400 MW (maybe a couple of hours 200-400), but the loss of one 300 MW gas plant sent the market soaring - and that Milner unit actually returned to service a few hours into the alert.
unfortunate typo: "so let’s hope for now more plant outages."
no - no more plant outages
please delete this comment if post is edited.
There are long duration storage technologies in the early stages of commercialization. Potential solutions for these winter peaks in demand and summer peaks going forward, in Alberta.
Form Energy is one company offering a solution. https://tldrify.com/1ch0
Use excess renewables, when there are available in Alberta, in the summertime.
Store that energy to be used again in the winter, on days like this.
https://youtu.be/aJU8-PailNE?feature=shared
Rondo Long Term Thermal Storage startup
https://tldrify.com/1ch1
Antora Energy Long Thermal Storage startup
https://tldrify.com/1ch2
Early days, there are solutions. Imagination, awareness, research and implementation needed
Thanks. Very interesting.
Is there good reason the two nat gas plants are offline?
Thanks to you and the students for this post and all previous posts!
Not up to speed on Canadian power but I have a few questions below that are related to the above.
- what is happening to spot power powers? You show gas spike but does gas set the price in Alberta markets? (Presume it does a fair amount of the time, especially in winter?)
- what sort of reserve power exists in AB? Are these mostly peakers - ocgts or recips?
- what interconnection is there between BC and SK? Is this spilling over?
- when AB is tight, are the neighbouring provinces even tighter than AB?
Thanks again for the posts