High Alberta utility rates can be directly blamed on the premier
By Lethbridge Herald on November 4, 2023.
Editor:
Our Premier Danielle Smith says, “current electricity rates could also double, triple or even quadruple.” Without a crystal ball she doesn’t have a clue what electricity rates will be in 2035 and neither do the people advising her.
The premier has little familiarity with the Alberta grid, it’s resources and it’s associated operations.
Alberta currently has 19,712 megawatts of electricity generation with 1,292 megawatts of solar and 3,853 megawatts of wind contributing to that total.
I’ve spent 30 years in the wind energy industry, and I fully understand that wind doesn’t blow and sun doesn’t shine all the time. However, it’s also a fact that coal, gas, and hydro don’t operate all the time, and are not necessarily available at times when needed. Every resource requires backup of some kind.
There are grids all over the world that have much greater penetrations of variable resources than Alberta.
For example, Denmark has 86 per cent renewables penetration with plans for 99.9 per cent by 2030. It’s a matter of managing those resources expertly. Additionally, grid storage like batteries, compressed air, gravity, pumped hydro among others, are being developed rapidly.
These will contribute to grid stability and additional generation as well as backups for wind and solar.
The fossil fuel industry and the people in their pockets are loathe to change because they’ve had it their way for decades, have profited obscenely and have great difficulty with a new vision that doesn’t include their old polluting habits.
The reason electricity prices are what they are today is because rates are set by fossil fuel generators owned by utilities and other lucrative fossil fuel giants.
What the premier doesn’t tell you is that wind and solar bid into the Alberta grid and submit their power at $0 per megawatt hour. Therefore, wind and solar contribute to reducing the average power price. Put another way, the more wind and solar on the grid the lower your electricity costs are all else being equal.
The foolishness of putting a moratorium on the very resources that reduce our power prices is ridiculous. High electricity rates present, or future, can be blamed on the premier!
Dale Johnson
Lethbridge
15-14
And all the fanciful dreams are going broke. There is the fantasy and then there is the reality. That is your option and here is another
https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/gunter-green-power-initiatives-losing-steam
Refute the facts.
In true Reform Party Fashion you quote the lies of one of their biggest supporters, Lorne Gunter, once again proving you aren’t capable of finding the truth or doing your thinking. What’s it like to be that dumb?
Your such an ignoramus that you can’t compose a coherent rebuttal to anyone else’s thoughts or opinion. Any way rant away unsupervised.
Dale My late father was a Power Plant Engineer for 38 years in Alberta and he certainly would have agreed with you, just like many of the Electrical Engineers I have talked to over the years. Dad got laughed at for promoting Solar Panels on roof tops yet people who did follow his advise said it was the smartest thing they ever did. When Ralph Klein forced his Deregulation on Albertans some of Lougheed’s former conservative MLAs that I knew where furious with him. One of them stated “This will cost Albertans Billions of Dollars and just think what it will do to our healthcare and education costs. Hospitals and schools use a lot of electricity”. This lie that Danielle Smith is feeding the fools that support her is certainly not being believed by any of the true conservative I know, they are a lot smarter than that. They know who created this mess with the help of their ignorant supporters who prefer not to save money. They would rather whine about what’s happening to them and believe the lies that it’s all Trudeau’s fault that’s how stupid they are.
Blamed on past premier Notley. Shutting down coal fired plants. Wind and solar can be made to look good on paper. Reality is different. It’s real. Yeah ,it is. There are times of high demand because of bad weather. Where is the wind and solar then? Often % of power coming from there is next to nothing. A simple solution would be a firm commitment from energy users . Commit to “green” energy, or to reliable energy. 100% of the time I mean. -35 and no wind and no sun would make gas or coal powered energy welcome. The hypocrisy is astounding though. Dale Johnson will never want to go without the only reliable ,consistent energy provider.
Once again old school has to prove how ignorant he is, ignorant of the fact that it was his hero Stephen Harper who started the closing down of the use of coal to create power, and the power industry accepted it. The employees that some of us have talked to fully supported it. You can bet he has never seen the massive creation of wind and solar power being created in Europe, but I doubt he could even afford to travel the world he’s been so busy helping the reformers help the rich steal his money. Yet the internet is full of articles proving it but these guys don’t want to read the truth they can’t handle it, they aren’t man enough, are they?
Got it Dale and Fedup – Smith Bad, Notley good….world perfect before Smith, world horrific since Smith….didnt stub my toe when Notley in chg, did when Smith leader….ALL SMITHS FAULT.
Lay off the mushrooms that have you both in such a fantasy world and Fed, take something for that anger issue…you are a very bitter old man and quite boring with your repetitiveness.
So don’t care that these Reformers are deliberately destroying this province creating a financial disaster for our children to have to deal with and you have no intention of trying to help us protect what our heroes the Lougheed Conservative Government created for us. It’s obvious that you can’t tell the difference between a conservative and a Reformer, right?
Fed, Lougheed may be YOUR hero, he’s not everyones. Your revisionist history forgets this was the man who grew the Provincial buget 10 fold from 1B to 10 B during his 14 yrs in govt; who oversaw the expansion of the civil service 4 fold; who made MLA’s full time beneficiaries of public monies and expanded legislative sittings to allow for more laws and more pork barreling of special interests. Your hero also opposed adding property rights to the Constitution in 1981 and took part in the Ultimate Betrayal of Albertans by ceding to the National Engery Plan of Trudeau Senior…do u recall the pic of he and Lougheed toasting the signing of this Plan? Of course not….
You can look to a rosy past discounting the darkness if you wish, delusion is somethimes comforting, but do not presume to lecture on the future from this twisted perspective.
So Lougheed was a bad guy but Klein gave you the highest property taxes in Canada, the highest power bills, the highest vehicle registration fees, the highest vehicle insurance premiums , the highest long term healthcare fees, the highest liquor prices, and a $260 billion orphan well cleanup mess and you’re not smart enough to understand it right?
Have you forgotten that Lougheed got Trudeau to change it so that it pleased Albertans and that’s what they toasted?
Are you going to ignore what this article states that was give to me by one of Lougheed’s MLAs
“Royalties down 32% Billions in Federal Revenue Lost”
utilities/energy should be owned by the people. thus, we can better control a basis of inflation, as well as be able to use the wealth from what are public resources for the public good. how are we so conditioned to the thinking that public wealth belongs in the hands of the private few?
It was until Klein privatized it. It was such a great deal now Warren Buffett owns it. We were told that Klein sold our industry that was valued at $7billion for $2 billion, are you surprised?