New power sources coming online in 2024 may ease power strain next winter: expert

The Alberta Energy Systems Operator (AESO) has issued a grid alert every day since Friday as power use in the province skyrocketed during the cold snap.

The most recent grid alert was issued Monday around 8 a.m., meaning AESO was dipping into emergency power reserves.

The alert ended about an hour after it was issued.

On Saturday a grid alert was followed by an emergency alert at 6:44 p.m., urging Albertans to cut their power use or prepare for rotating outages.

"We would rotate blocks of outages in approximately 30-minute increments," Leif Sollid of AESO said Monday.

"We don't want anyone to be without power for any significant amount of time."

Ultimately, Sollid says Albertans responded and cut their power use and blackouts were avoided.

"Within two minutes, the drain on the system dropped by more than 200 megawatts, which was huge. Albertans responding right away to that plea for electricity conservation, that's what kept us from having to go to rotating outages."

The City of Edmonton says it turned off lights on the Walterdale and High Level Bridges, as well as Commonwealth Stadium, Sir Winston Churchill Square and City Hall Plaza to help conserve energy.

Public Safety Canada encourages Canadians to have an emergency kit that will last for at least 72 hours if a blackout should occur.

While Edmonton is slowly rising from the deep freeze, AESO is still asking people to conserve power between the peak period of 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. on Monday night to help prevent another grid alert.

One industry expert says if Alberta gets another cold snap in coming months, there could still be rotating outages, however a number of new power sources are expected to come online later this year which will ease the situation next winter.

"Cascade [Power Plant], which is 900 megawatts, will be our biggest gas plant in the province," Blake Shaffer of the University of Calgary told CTV News Calgary. "It's actually built, they were actually testing it last week. Unfortunately, it wasn't firing over the weekend. But that should be ready by February or March."

Shaffer says the Genesee coal plant will be converted into a natural gas plant this year, jumping from the current production of 800 megawatts to 1,400 megawatts, and a new generator built by Suncor is anticipated to put out an additional 800 megawatts.

"So you put those numbers together, that's a big increase, it's almost a 25 per cent increase in our natural gas capacity in the province, so that makes me not concerned at all about later in this year," he said.

With files from CTV News Calgary