NEWS FILE PHOTO
The City of Medicine Hat utility department says it has had no trouble meeting local demand during this week's cold snap and has been exporting power to the provincial grid where prices are high.
cgallant@medicinehatnews.com@CollinGallant
Alberta’s power grid managers say the system approached a point Monday where they would consider implementing rolling brownouts as cold weather sent demand to near record levels while supply was hampered by off-line coal plants and a lull in wind power production.
Locally, City of Medicine Hat utility officials said Tuesday they have had no problem meeting local demand and are prepared to export as much power as possible to take advantage of sky-high rates.
“Our units are running well and we’re supplying the city load and are exporting everything that’s not required (here),” said Brian Strandlund, general manager of the city’s power plant.
“It’s been good for us … and anything we have extra helps stabilize the province.”
The entire province is under an extreme cold warning from environment Canada – expected to last all week – while several coal plants went down Monday afternoon. At the same time, wind power production has dropped as the extreme cold weather system stalled over the province.
The Alberta Electric provincial system operator issued an alert Monday evening as grid demand approached record levels at 11,693 megawatts at 6 p.m. Monday. That is just four megawatts short of winter season record.
They raised the alert to level 2 at 7:15 p.m. – one step short of curtailing power and causing brownouts – before downgrading the situation later that night. On Tuesday they stated that no curtailment was required to balance supply and demand.
“With the cold weather expected to continue over the next few days, the AESO is closely monitoring the system,” according to a statement.
Utility personnel in Medicine Hat are expecting high provincial demand to extend for several days.
Medicine Hat, meanwhile, doesn’t require imports to meet local needs, and typically records its highest demand during summer months when air-conditioners are operating.
That leaves them extra capacity to bid into the provincial grid supply system.
In Alberta’s energy-only market prices that typically range from $30 to $50 range per megawatt hour rise as high as $1,000 during times of short supply.
Prices fell overnight, then rose sharply again Tuesday morning and remained in the high $900 range throughout the daytime hours.
On Jan. 1, one unit of the Battle River generating complex was taken permanently offline, and the new owner, Heartland Generating, has applied to convert other coal units in the former Atco complex to operate on natural gas.
Several others produced intermittently throughout the day and wind power facilities produced only a small fraction of their peak capacity of nearly 1,800 megawatts.
“That in conjunction with high-use and demand going up, they (AESO) fell short,” said Strandlund.
