Minister of red tape addition next to be added to cabinet!
Not listed there but strange is the reference Marlaina made to requiring 1-1 NG or Base load power generation for every new renewable installation authorized. Ham fisted and stupid.
Transmission costs are bit hard to nail down. Let's use Coal generation as an example. The coal is largely in beds west of edmonton/ foothills, and it's heavy thus relatively expensive to move. Our solution then was to put the generating stations nearby and pay to transport the power. But, in essence, you can think of the cost as being either added as a cost of business to your power cost, or broken out and added as a transmission cost to your bill. This makes some sense because either way there would be cost to the producer/ user and likely the removal of that cost enables development while potentially saving money ultimately for the user base (electricity is cheaper to move than coal, and we don't have to breathe in as many particulates if the generators are further away.)
But with Solar, this isn't the case. The product is available more in some places, making it more economical and better $ to build in southern alberta, but there's no population there to use it so it must be transported. At first blush it sounds different than coal, because there's no added cost to transport the coal, but not producing as much solar energy per installed panel is actually a similar increase to the overall cost of the power. What we have done in this case though is refuse to augment the case for building more capacity.
I would leave the system as is, personally. But people have been growing increasingly more angry about things like transmission fees so this is the resulting policy, with the added dash of flavor being the ideological #### renewables stance of the gov.
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