kiggupiggu
New Member
This is another new one I believe. 58MW near Edmonton.
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- Thread starter Alex_YYC
- Start date
Rollerstud98
Active Member
Not quite the scale of these larger projects but we have these 2 roof top installations here in Airdrie on city buildings.
www.airdrie.ca
City of Airdrie - Solar installations
The City is working with ENMAX Energy and CBI Solar to install the largest 3,800 solar modules on the roof of Genesis Place to create a system which will ultimately be Canada’s largest municipal rooftop solar system.
Added it to the list.
Enough smaller projects like this pop up and it adds up.Not quite the scale of these larger projects but we have these 2 roof top installations here in Airdrie on city buildings.
City of Airdrie - Solar installations
The City is working with ENMAX Energy and CBI Solar to install the largest 3,800 solar modules on the roof of Genesis Place to create a system which will ultimately be Canada’s largest municipal rooftop solar system.
Atticus
Active Member
I never realized there were so many solar projects around Alberta. I hope they all come to fruition, looking at the total power generation for Alberta, solar is still very low.
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FriendlyDrunks
Active Member
That mix may be a bit out of date, looks like those numbers are from 2018.I never realized there were so many solar projects around Alberta. I hope they all come to fruition, looking at the total power generation for Alberta, solar is still very low.
JonnyCanuck
Senior Member
Even if green energy accounts for say 12% of power generation, it still is a very long way to go to replace natural gas, coal etc. This is where the people who are anxious to kill fossil fuel production NOW, are not living in reality. That transition has to be made gradually and the infrastructure for green energy scaled accordingly ... AND ... even then it needs to be tested for every season, every weather event before weaning off of fossil fuels completely. I am thinking that there will always be need of some kind of fossil fuel back-up but we will wait and see how the transition progresses.
UrbanWarrior
Senior Member
I know in the study I did, rooftop solar across the province had increased nearly 100% year over year between 2018 and 2019. I’ll have to check my stats and maybe post some screen shots.
Also, for reference, the graph of Alberta electricity production above is from 2018. Things have changed fairly drastically in a short time. I’ll be really interested to see the 2022 numbers someday once nearly half a gigawatt is being produced at a single solar farm (Travers Vulcan).
Also, for reference, the graph of Alberta electricity production above is from 2018. Things have changed fairly drastically in a short time. I’ll be really interested to see the 2022 numbers someday once nearly half a gigawatt is being produced at a single solar farm (Travers Vulcan).
darwink
Senior Member
The last coal for electricity production in Alberta will be used in 2023. By the start of the new year, only Capital Power will be using coal for electricity production.
Already 2140 MW of coal has been converted to gas fired steam. 2530 MW of coal fired remains. Capital power is moving 1266 MW to gas by 2023. TransAlta is mining its last coal at the end of the year, and will be de-rating to gas only operations or repowering with gas the remaining 1,263 MW.
Barring amazing either storage or production advances, replacing gas will be much harder. We'll need to prospect for wind from diversified sources, expand wind resources by an order of magnitude (to 20,000 megawatts of capacity) to get to the point where less gas capacity is needed. If storage keeps getting cheaper, can likely do a balance of solar (100 MW of capacity with 360 MWH of storage to displace 5 MW of gas capacity entirely by my crude estimation) .
Big question becomes: what will be do with that much extra electricity the rest of the year. Or is it better instead for 2 months of the year, and for half the night for 6 months of the year still use a substantial amount of gas and pay for offsets forever.
Already 2140 MW of coal has been converted to gas fired steam. 2530 MW of coal fired remains. Capital power is moving 1266 MW to gas by 2023. TransAlta is mining its last coal at the end of the year, and will be de-rating to gas only operations or repowering with gas the remaining 1,263 MW.
Barring amazing either storage or production advances, replacing gas will be much harder. We'll need to prospect for wind from diversified sources, expand wind resources by an order of magnitude (to 20,000 megawatts of capacity) to get to the point where less gas capacity is needed. If storage keeps getting cheaper, can likely do a balance of solar (100 MW of capacity with 360 MWH of storage to displace 5 MW of gas capacity entirely by my crude estimation) .
Big question becomes: what will be do with that much extra electricity the rest of the year. Or is it better instead for 2 months of the year, and for half the night for 6 months of the year still use a substantial amount of gas and pay for offsets forever.
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Maybe we could use it for hydrogen production?
True. Some of the new projects are magnitudes larger than the earlier ones. It'll be interesting to see where the numbers fall when all of the u/c projects are completed.
Agreed. Fossil fuels aren't going away soon, but at the same time we should be aggressively pushing green technologies now, so that we are prepared. The more we push now, the less vulnerable we'll be.
DougB
Active Member
This presents the most accurate view (sum of TNG and DCR columns under Generation):
Obviously the generation mix constantly changes. Alberta is the only province with fully transparent electricity generation data thanks to the deregulated market. AESO's data drills down to actual generation. For example, a wind provider may have successfully bid into the power pool but may be relying on gas fired backstop due to weather conditions. AESO would show that as gas, whereas many other system operators would show that as wind. The TNG and DCR from wind is almost always well below its MC (theoretical or "nameplate" capacity). Observing the wind numbers over time, clearly shows that Alberta's wind generators are a long ways from geographic diversity reducing the need for gas fired backstop as changes in the actual capacities across wind farms correlate strongly. Alberta is almost always a net consumer over the overties. Generation transmitted over the BC intertie would be entirely hydro, MT would be a mix of coal, gas and hydro, SK would be a mix of coal and gas. Also note the significant contribution of gas fired cogen, mainly SAGD facilities also producing electricity. Unsure if emissions from these facilities would be classified as O&G or electrical generation (the feds and NGO's probably double count).
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Cowtown
Senior Member
I agree 100% that we can't kill fossil fuels now, but pushing hard on solar, or other clean energy is a good idea. I don't think we need to go away from natural gas powered electricity altogether, but the long term play should be to make it a backup to the other methods.
Patrick.1980
Active Member
Looking at these numbers from your link. Does TNG mean power generated over a whole year? Also it shows Solar as Maximum capacity of 336 MW, but total generated is 0 MW, are the solar power farms not generating any power?
GROUP | MC | TNG | DCR |
| GAS | 9573 | 6570 | 37 |
| HYDRO | 894 | 231 | 323 |
| ENERGY STORAGE | 50 | 0 | 48 |
| SOLAR | 336 | 0 | 0 |
| WIND | 2139 | 518 | 0 |
| OTHER | 433 | 320 | 12 |
| DUAL FUEL | 540 | 210 | 10 |
| COAL | 2530 | 1825 | 0 |
| TOTAL | 16495 | 9674 | 430 |
For a good idea of general consumption and generation method, this site does a good of showing it. You can drill down to specific days of the year to see the changes in generation of different methods.
Green Alberta Energy | Statistics
Over 17 % of the installed Market Capacity of generation in Alberta is from Renewables.
www.greenalbertaenergy.ca
You can remove the other generation methods by clicking on them. This for example shows only solar power generation for the past week. On the 7th, it peaked at 254 MW generation, out of a Max Capacity of 336 MW (Matches the MC shown in your chart) But total Generation can be found in these day to day stats.