Alberta Politics & Government Thread 3.0

[timun]

Originally Posted by Tron_fdc

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!

Originally Posted by Fuzz

I'm gonna guess Transalta as one!

The safe money is on two of Transalta, Capital Power and Heartland.

[accord1999]

Originally Posted by Tron_fdc

Hahahaha whose idea was “economic withholding”???

Economic withholding seems to be the new boogeyman word. In a market-based system like Alberta's, a participant can bid any price they want. A baseload generator like coal (or nuclear) for maximum efficiency usually wants to run 24/7 and will bid a low price so they are always dispatched. A peaking unit like a simple cycle gas turbine or a diesel turbine have much higher operating costs and so will only bid prices that are high enough to earn a return.

There are also much complicated matters involved, sometimes there are constraints on supply at a power plant, or bottleneck in the the transmission lines so that the system has to use a more expensive power plant. There's an Australian website that covers their electricity system and markets and they go into detail about the various factors that goes into deciding how electricity is dispatched from various suppliers.

https://wattclarity.com.au/articles/...x5-constraint/

Economic withholding is bad and is still illegal if there is collusion between multiple participants or one participant is so big it dominates the market.

[Fuzz]

Is it a boogeyman if it is the source of our high prices?

[accord1999]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Is it a boogeyman if it is the source of our high prices?

It's not if the cost of providing reliable electricity in the short-term, the future cost of renewing the Alberta power generation fleet and demand has gone up.

[Tron_fdc]

Great. So we should allow price manipulation in a tight market?? Because that’s what happened.

Say what you want, but at the end of the day, allowing that in a closed off, deregulated electricity market is ridiculous. It’s green lighting generators to withhold capacity to raise prices.

If you could bring on supply from outside the province, or if excess supply was available, then sure. But electricity is poorly stored and poorly transported. This isn’t the diamond trade either, you can’t just go without it if you don’t want to pay for it.

Electricity is an essential service. It should not be deregulated. Seems to me it’s turning into something only the wealthy can afford, and that’s WRONG.

I’m an open minded person but you’re going to have a tough time changing my mind here.

[Frequitude]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

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.

An unknown but massive change to the size and shape of the entire swimming pool is about to be imposed. I sure as hell hope any government would get out of the pool and reevaluate what discipline to compete in and in which lane. This includes reevaluating what the best market structure to achieve that change is.

You’re just being a partisan fanatic now, man. But I won’t try to convince you anymore. Thanks for coming along for part of the journey though and thanks to everyone else who also seemed interested in learning more.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by Frequitude

An unknown but massive change to the size and shape of the entire swimming pool is about to be imposed. I sure as hell hope any government would get out of the pool and reevaluate what discipline to compete in and in which lane. This includes reevaluating what the best market structure to achieve that change is.

You’re just being a partisan fanatic now, man. But I won’t try to convince you anymore. Thanks for coming along for part of the journey though and thanks to everyone else who also seemed interested in learning more.

I'm not being partisan, I just expect a government to be able to justify what they are doing. So far Danielle has not been able to do that, because what she has said and what she has done are different things. She even tried to blame it on the regulator.


I've said for a few years now we need to figure out how to deal with long periods of low generation in the winter. In principle, I agree that there are problems that are unsolved. I'd welcome a well reasoned, planned, and informed process to take place. That's not at all what this is, and the evidence is everywhere.

[Fuzz]

Tron_fdc had mentioned this last week and was having trouble sharing, so I've found a place to upload it. I haven't had a chance to read it yet, so I'll leave it to him to explain, or link to his previous post!

EDIT: I see the previous file was scanned in reverse order, I've fixed it.

https://www.docdroid.net/4yzDgxq/08102023-pdf

[Fuzz]

So, grain of salt because Pembina, but they've assembled the data on paused projects:

https://www.pembina.org/reports/2023...-factsheet.pdf

An estimated 24,000 jobs and $33-billion in investments are at risk because of the Alberta Government’s seven-month moratorium on renewable energy development, the Pembina Institute said this morning.

In addition to the 24,000 jobs and $33 billion in investments put at risk, the projects would have contributed an additional $263 million a year in tax and land-lease revenue to 27 different municipalities, the report says.

The fact sheet includes a list of the impacted projects, the companies making the proposal, the planning area where they would take place, and estimates of the investment size, expected number of jobs, and tax revenue from each.

https://albertapolitics.ca/2023/08/e...ina-institute/

I'm sure O&G will make up the difference...

[TheIronMaiden]

Conservatives are good for the economy my ass.

[fotze2]

I have entered my company into the operating reserves market and know ten ten times more than the average bear about the power market but know 1% how it all actually works. I don't understand how you all can speak so confidently about this stuff.

My bud was a VP at Transalta for years, said Dawn is an absolute turnip and the market manipulation they can do is grotesque. So lets make her the CEO of Transmountain.

This site is really cool though. Can see the grid in real time. We are lucky its been a relatively cool summer.

http://ets.aeso.ca/

[Johnny Makarov]

Originally Posted by TheIronMaiden

Conservatives are good for the economy my ass.

You would have to be a major idiot to think that the past 15-20 years. What a myth!

[Lubicon]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

So, grain of salt because Pembina, but they've assembled the data on paused projects:

https://www.pembina.org/reports/2023...-factsheet.pdf



https://albertapolitics.ca/2023/08/e...ina-institute/

I'm sure O&G will make up the difference...

Anecdotally:
My daughter has a contract position with an environmental firm who do work on solar and wind project. They are a large company but with a small presence in Alberta with their western Canadian office in Calgary. It is a small location (handful of employees) but they were moving ahead with an expansion of the office (and the jobs that go with it) but that has now been paused. And these are good STEM type jobs, hiring university grads which is exactly what we have been trying to attract. Now we're driving them away it appears.

[Fuzz]

https://twitter.com/user/status/1694745952882728998


Either a liar or incompetent. Take your pick!

[Hemi-Cuda]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Either a liar or incompetent. Take your pick!

[TorqueDog]

She's already proven that she's both on several occasions.

[accord1999]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

So, grain of salt because Pembina, but they've assembled the data on paused projects:

$33B, that's what something like 30 GW of solar and/or wind? Most of it would have never been built because the first $10B will have wrecked the business case of the next $20B, as too much power would be produced during the mid-day and windy time periods and prices would be 0 or negative. And transmission lines would be overloaded and there would be no way to get power from windy or sunny but remote areas.

And all that capital investment needs to be paid off, in this case by Albertans. Oil and gas is valuable because most of it is bought by Americans (and hopefully Chinese and Indians in the future).

I'm sure O&G will make up the difference...

It would only take like 1% growth to make up for it.

[Yoho]

Originally Posted by TheIronMaiden

Conservatives are good for the economy my ass.

It’s a shame this will hurt an industry the federal environment minister is such a champion for.

[Fuzz]

So it's good because...spite? Ya, that's the government I want.

[Yoho]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

So it's good because...spite? Ya, that's the government I want.

He’s probably hearing from those who he made promises to. I wonder if he will be at all a bit more open to negotiation.