During rotating outages, AESO directs electricity distribution facility owners, such as municipalities, to reduce power pro rata across the state. Critical facilities such as hospitals, fire departments, police departments and first responders will not be subject to rotating power outages. The power outage is expected to last 30 minutes.
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Neudorf’s office offered tips for reducing energy usage during the alert.
- Turn off unnecessary lights and appliances.
- Minimize the use of space heaters.
- Delay the use of major power consumers such as washers, dryers, and dishwashers.
- Delay charging electric vehicles and connecting block heaters.
- Cook in a microwave, clay pot, or toaster oven instead of an electric stove or oven.
- Limit the use of exhaust fans in the kitchen and bathroom.
- Work on a laptop rather than a desktop computer (laptops are more energy efficient than desktop computers).
- Appliances continue to use energy even when turned off, so unplug them when not in use (or use a power bar to power multiple appliances with one button). ).
- Cover drafty windows by closing curtains/shades/blinds
Andrew Leach, a professor of economics and law at the University of Alberta who specializes in energy issues, said Saturday night was a combination of frigid temperatures. Power outage at two gas plantsthere is little solar and wind power generation, and limited electricity imports from British Columbia and Saskatchewan.
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Leach pointed out that Alberta hit. new demand record It reached 12,384 megawatts on Thursday, but there is no indication the system will face significant strain in the coming days.
He said wind power was contributing about 1,000 megawatts on Thursday, but AESO would have had forecasts showing wind power production would decline in the coming days. He added that no one involved would have expected solar power to be generated at 7pm on a January night.
“What was AESO expected to do now to survive the winter (demand) peaks? Were these winter peaks much higher than expected? It was also several hundred MW higher. What has changed between now and since, when AESO said earlier this week that everything would be fine as far as we know?”
Leach said the outages at the Milner and Sundance 6 gas plants would have taken hundreds of MW offline.
“This is a significant amount of power generation, but if one gas plant goes down for maintenance and one gas plant goes down for maintenance, it creates an emergency situation, alerts on mobile phones, and rolling blackouts. It shouldn’t be so volatile that it (could) happen.”
He added that the 900MW Cascade Power Project, a new gas generation facility near Edson, is in the commissioning stage and is providing intermittent power to the grid.
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