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Originally Posted by driveway
That’s completely ass-backwards. Solar panels function better at cooler temperatures and less efficiently at high temperatures.
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Time for a bump to this thread (more appropriate versus the weather thread, but could also be in the Alberta politics thread).
The cold hard truth about solar and wind in Alberta.
http://ets.aeso.ca/ets_web/ip/Market...DReportServlet
Wind and solar continues to power Alberta and keeping our lights and keeping us warm in this extreme cold...with 42 MW generation out of 1800 max capacity for over a billion dollar spent. Solar has provided a net 0 over the past 2 days.
People need to look at the actual median and average outputs of solar and not agenda pushing media (or reddit) when debating the merits of solar and wind, especially here. This solar plant cost taxpayers 30 million, uses over 70 acres of land dedicated to it, and it's planned for a 50 million dollar extension.
https://www.dispatcho.app/live/BSC1?r=2592000
Brooks Solar Plant has not been above 1 MW since October.
Good thing our 18 coal power plants is being phased out at a cost of 1.3 billion for early retirement while we build wind turbines and more solar projects that don't do anything half the year (and half those days for solar).
We are almost -1000 in the hole, having to get power from BC (ocean), Montana and Sask (lots of coal powered energy) because Alberta is unable to power itself anymore. In the end it costs Alberta more money, while still emitting the same amount of carbon emissions, it's just being generated elsewhere with the money going out the province.
The reality in climates like Calgary is that both wind and solar are far from the viability and perform much worse than what the media is portraying. You will of course find articles like this one below always talking of max capacity and how many thousands to hundreds of thousands of houses it will power as if they ever peak there, let alone the median. It's the 2020 version of snake oil.
https://globalnews.ca/news/4967533/n...lants-alberta/
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The plants are to produce about 94 megawatts at peak times, enough to power about 20,000 homes, and about 270 jobs will be created during construction.
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I can tell you right now, that those solar power plants would produce 0 MW today.
I wish for the days when nuclear was not the red headed stepchild step it is today, we had the answer to the energy problem and reducing carbon emissions, but simply ignore it. Ontario still gets the biggest share of its electricity from nuclear on the backs of 40-50 year old nuclear power plants and doesn't get phased by fluctuating weather conditions.
Renewable should be viable and sustainable, and wind and solar are just not able to meet either of these criteria at this moment. I am all for them if they were efficient, but they simply are not.