Alberta Politics & Government Thread 3.0

[undercoverbrother]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Smith recently tweeted this:

https://twitter.com/user/status/1692628517132067187


I was interested in some drill down on these numbers, so went looking for where they are from. Hrmm, it says the source is "Reliable Alberta". Who is that? Oh, just some random Twitter account run by...who the #### knows! But it's good enough to use for slamming the feds!

This is the type of well researched information gathering I'd expect as a taxpayer in this province. Random anonymous Twitter accounts. I guess this passes for information these days. But I guess it's probably no worse than the Frasier Institute she is happy to use when their misinformation is convenient.

errrr it says it is reliable.


also their X profile says "Facts not feelings."

[iggy_oi]

Why doesn’t she say how much would be reasonably feasible?

[Fuzz]

I'm curious what people think the outcome will be in 7 months. Will it be an extended moratorium? Caps on each type? "Our bad, everything was fine"?


I think they'll basically kill the renewable industry through low caps and tariffs that make it uneconomical, but they can point to their new framework as to how they worked with industry to make a system that works for everyone, while essentially killing it.

[BlackArcher101]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

I'm curious what people think the outcome will be in 7 months. Will it be an extended moratorium? Caps on each type? "Our bad, everything was fine"?


I think they'll basically kill the renewable industry through low caps and tariffs that make it uneconomical, but they can point to their new framework as to how they worked with industry to make a system that works for everyone, while essentially killing it.

Sounds about right. Cap the amount of renewables that are designed to offset carbon of other sources, then complain they can't build enough of the carbon producing sources because they can't offset it, then blame the feds.

[Tron_fdc]

So is that 106 dams OR 6768 turbines OR 105k acres of panels? Or all of the above? Hydro, turbines and panels all come in different sizes of generation capacities as well. So that tweet is a little misleading.

The crux of the argument here, is that if Alberta was to build out power requirements using only solar and wind, is that in times of heavy demand and low power generation from those 2 sources, generation capacity from other sources would not be sufficient to supply the grid. I believe this happened in Germany and they had to import coal power from France.

In a deregulated Ab market this would mean massive price increases while demand was high because we don’t have the generation capacity to supply the demand and don’t have line capacity to import. Worst case would be rolling brownouts during winter.

Reliable capacity HAS to be available if that scenario were to happen. In the CER it mentions peak plants are free to run in those scenarios, but in a deregulated market who is going to finance and build them? If there’s a business case to build these plants it means power prices are high and our market isn’t functioning properly, and once it DID begin to function where these peakers aren’t needed what do you do with the plant you just built? Mothball it?

To me I think the easy answer is continue to allow renewable development, spend money on increasing line capacity to tie into BC, Montana, Sk while you build nuclear. Tie ins are probably the path of least resistance with an ultimate goal of net zero nuclear reactors. I’m no expert though.

[Torture]

I know Smith isn't saying anything in good faith but frankly, 105,000 acres of solar or half of Calgary to provide enough power for the whole province seems pretty darn achievable to me. Travers alone is about 3% of that. Anybody know how many acres of solar we have today?

Edit: Just adding up this list (https://list.solar/plants/largest-plants/canada/) very quickly so not perfect math, I'm at 20,000+ acres just adding up the the "largest solar power stations in Canada" that are in Alberta.
So we're about 20-25% of the way there already. Seems very doable to me.

Edit 2: Mixing figures here, but consider it to be more rough napkin math. Alberta as of 2017, was using 1% of wind potential, in 2020 had 900 turbines (3rd most in the country behind ON & QC). We were projected to double in 2023 according to CER. So to get to the "impossible" 6500 number that Smith quotes, if we grow at half the pace that 2023 was projected (450 vs 900) we would hit 6300 turbines by the end of 2035. Of course, "turbines" is a stupid measurement because it's really more about capacity and generation - turbines nowadays are "the size of the Calgary tower" and generate way more power than smaller turbines did.

Just pointing out that these numbers that Smith is tweeting as impossible are actually quite achievable.

[StickMan]

Originally Posted by Torture

I know Smith isn't saying anything in good faith but frankly, 105,000 acres of solar or half of Calgary to provide enough power for the whole province seems pretty darn achievable to me. Travers alone is about 3% of that. Anybody know how many acres of solar we have today?

Edit: Just adding up this list (https://list.solar/plants/largest-plants/canada/) very quickly so not perfect math, I'm at 20,000+ acres just adding up the the "largest solar power stations in Canada" that are in Alberta.
So we're about 20-25% of the way there already. Seems very doable to me.

Edit 2: Mixing figures here, but consider it to be more rough napkin math. Alberta as of 2017, was using 1% of wind potential, in 2020 had 900 turbines (3rd most in the country behind ON & QC). We were projected to double in 2023 according to CER. So to get to the "impossible" 6500 number that Smith quotes, if we grow at half the pace that 2023 was projected (450 vs 900) we would hit 6300 turbines by the end of 2035. Of course, "turbines" is a stupid measurement because it's really more about capacity and generation - turbines nowadays are "the size of the Calgary tower" and generate way more power than smaller turbines did.

Just pointing out that these numbers that Smith is tweeting as impossible are actually quite achievable.

Wind and solar are such a waste of time and money, why even bother? If we want to be serious we need to quit dicking around and start building nuclear, we should have started years ago.

[accord1999]

Originally Posted by Torture

I know Smith isn't saying anything in good faith but frankly, 105,000 acres of solar or half of Calgary to provide enough power for the whole province seems pretty darn achievable to me. Travers alone is about 3% of that. Anybody know how many acres of solar we have today?

I think that's purely in panels, there's more space required overall because panels can't be tightly packed together in all directions. Solar plants in the American SW are around 500-600 MW over 3000-4000 acres in size. With Alberta solar capacity factor of <20%, you would need about 50 GW of solar to generate the 85 TWh that Alberta consumes in a year. Or about 300K acres, which isn't too bad on paper.

But space is not the strongest argument against solar, its real problem is its daily/seasonal generational profile at Alberta latitudes. That 50 GW of solar will produce most of it during the summer mid-day, when Alberta demand is 10-11 GW so most of it can't be used and no infrastructure to store 100+ GWh of electricty.

And for wind, it will frequently be weak for days at at time, a fatal problems given Alberta's winter. Those are the strong arguments against significantly more solar and wind capacity in Alberta, but it's harder to explain in a news sound bite.

[Fuzz]

https://twitter.com/user/status/1694404360862826706


It appears that Company A and Company B have been ####ing us quite hard since the end of PPA's.

[Yoho]

https://twitter.com/user/status/1694443700070338637

[Fuzz]

Albertans still facing charges for breaking pandemic-related laws are off the hook after a court decision ruled the province's health orders were invalid because they breached the Public Health Act.


The move follows a court decision issued three weeks ago which found politicians made the final decision on the province's pandemic-related health restrictions instead of the Chief Medical Officer of Health (CMOH), which isn't allowed under the Act.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calga...945062?cmp=rss

So our ####ty politicians broke the Public Health Act, leading to worse outcomes for Albertans, and the result is that these selfish pieces of #### get off because of it? Will Kenney or any of these worthless politicians ever have punishment for it? No, of course not, they haven't even done anything about the last election where he cheated.

There is not a shred of justice left in this world.

#### you, UCP voters. #### you all to hell.

[Tron_fdc]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

https://twitter.com/user/status/1694404360862826706


It appears that Company A and Company B have been ####ing us quite hard since the end of PPA's.

Care to guess who that is?

My money is on the city owned utilities, and they’ve been boning Albertans a lot longer than that!

[Fuzz]

I'm gonna guess Transalta as one!

[accord1999]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

It appears that Company A and Company B have been ####ing us quite hard since the end of PPA's.

The UCP probably should have kept the capacity market plan but if they did, we would have even more complaints about the Alberta government subsidizing coal and natural gas by paying them for firmer capacity.

And despite the tweet's comment, the continuing decline of coal undoubtedly caused price increases in 2021 as it was mostly replaced by NG generators and NG prices increased in 2021.

[Faust]

disordered @disorderedyyc

Danielle Smith finally admitting the truth, the UCP screwed up by allowing economic withholding resulting in skyrocketing electricity rates:

#ableg #abpoli
twitter.com/TheRealDKGray/…

https://twitter.com/disorderedyyc/st...441114062?s=21

[Faust]

Sonya Savage signs off on allowing economic withholding and Jason Kenney is currently on the Board of Directors for ATCO

Fun times my friends, fun times

[Tron_fdc]

Hahahaha whose idea was “economic withholding”???

This isn’t new. Whoever ok’d it should be shot into the sun.

I need to pay more attention. Last time I was around for those kinds of shenanigans Enron was doing it for “maintenance” reasons, and it cost Californians billions.

https://amp.theguardian.com/business...5/enron.usnews

"Ah, we want you guys to get a little creative, and come up with a reason to go down," Bill says on the tape. "Anything you want to do over there? Any cleaning, anything like that?"
"OK, so we're just comin' down for some maintenance, like a forced outage type thing?" Rich replies, according to transcripts published yesterday. "I think that's a good plan, Rich," Bill says. "... I knew I could count on you."

[Frequitude]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Frankly, I find it amazing how quickly capitalist conservatives can discard the very principles for which they stand. Like, this is basically Venezuela level governance going on, yet the defenders are here to explain why free market capitalism needs to be restrained...for...reasons.

So you’re a staunch supporter of our deregulated energy-only electricity market structure vs. the regulated markets in the other provinces?

Originally Posted by Fuzz

I'm curious what people think the outcome will be in 7 months. Will it be an extended moratorium? Caps on each type? "Our bad, everything was fine"?

Re-evaluate what the optimal Alberta grid of the future is once CER’s Gazette 2 final regs are published (currently estimated to be the first half of 2024)?

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by Tron_fdc

Hahahaha whose idea was “economic withholding”???

This isn’t new. Whoever ok’d it should be shot into the sun.

I need to pay more attention. Last time I was around for those kinds of shenanigans Enron was doing it for “maintenance” reasons, and it cost Californians billions.

https://amp.theguardian.com/business...5/enron.usnews

"Ah, we want you guys to get a little creative, and come up with a reason to go down," Bill says on the tape. "Anything you want to do over there? Any cleaning, anything like that?"
"OK, so we're just comin' down for some maintenance, like a forced outage type thing?" Rich replies, according to transcripts published yesterday. "I think that's a good plan, Rich," Bill says. "... I knew I could count on you."

Well, since you mention Enron...

Enron (that now-failed poster boy for corporate malfeasance) was a principal adviser to the Alberta government in 2000 when the province was deregulating the electrical power industry.

In the late 1990s, the Ralph Klein government was deregulation mad. In its haste, it partnered with Enron to get Alberta’s electricity deregulation done as quickly as possible.

Clearly, the government should have known better.

Enron’s willingness to manipulate and deceive was well known. Prior to its involvement with Alberta, Enron had a strategy in California that it referred to as “Fat Boy,” in which it submitted fraudulent power schedules to government officials that caused unnecessary spikes in power prices. And its “Death Star” strategy involved transmission fraud, in which Enron created false power congestion that resulted in the company getting paid to alleviate a problem that didn’t exist.

The minute Enron became involved with the Alberta government to “improve” the system through deregulation, there was only one certainty: the public would pay the price for any failure. You can bank on that.

https://troymedia.com/politicslaw/al...o-power-plays/

Hey! He was right! Funny how we vote for the same failed Conservative polices for decades and then we get ####ed! Over and over! Voters somehow never connect the two. UCP voters, could you explain why you do this? I'm baffled.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by Frequitude

So you’re a staunch supporter of our deregulated energy-only electricity market structure vs. the regulated markets in the other provinces?

Re-evaluate what the optimal Alberta grid of the future is once CER’s Gazette 2 final regs are published (currently estimated to be the first half of 2024)?

No, that doesn't make any sense. I want UCP supporters to pick a lane. This is either good because we need market regulation, or it's bad because the free market can handle these things. I strongly believe any public need and utility should be in public hands. If you want to argue otherwise, you can celebrate massive profits on electricity by market manipulation and have a laugh at poor people and tell them to hold out for it to trickle down.

I also want a government to make decisions that don't come across as insane, but that's a stretch goal.