'Every megawatt matters': Albertans respond quickly to emergency electricity alert

Albertans did the right thing Saturday night, unplugging enough that the provincial power grid was able to avoid resorting to a series of rotating power outages on a night when the wind-chill readings across the province threatened to drop to -50 C.

The Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO) worked with the province to issue an emergency alert early Saturday evening, asking everyone to reduce electricity use to essential needs only, to lower the load on the province’s electrical grid, which had been running with a grid alert since 3:30 p.m.

Almost immediately, the AESO says there was a 100 megawatt (MW) drop in demand, which soared to a 200 MW reduction within minutes.

By 8:40 p.m., the alert was ended.

“The province-wide response to the call for energy conservation was tremendous,” said Mike Law, president and CEO of the AESO, in a release. “On behalf of the AESO, I would like to extend my thanks to all Albertans who responded to the call for action, which ensured we didn’t have to progress to rotating outages, keeping our grid up and running for all Albertans.”

In a Sunday morning interview with CTV News, AESO communications director Leif Sollid described the Saturday demand in power as a “gridlock situation.”

“That's where we are no longer able to meet demand with available supply,” Sollid said. “We need to use backup reserves, and so we were in that situation for just over five hours yesterday.”

Sollid said the rapid reaction from Albertans was a game-changer for the overburdened electricity grid.

“That was actually the deciding factor in preventing us from having to go to rotating outages, so Albertans really stepped forward and did their part,” he said.

Sollid said the peak hours for electricity consumption are between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m., which he suggested is a time to avoid using large appliances, washing machines, dishwashers, dryers, turning off lights and possibly not plugging in block heaters.

“Anything you can do to just reduce your household (electricity) demand, when that’s done across the province, that can bring down overall system demand and can make a big difference,” he said.

“It literally is every megawatt matters.”

UNPRECEDENTED STEP

He added that having AESO collaborate with the province to issue an emergency alert was an unprecedented step that has never been taken before.

Sollid said that  Alberta set a new record on Thursday night at 6 p.m., for the most megawatts of electricity consumed in a single hour: 12, 384.

On Sunday morning at 11 a.m., the wind chill in Calgary was -44 C, with more cold forecast to last through Monday morning at least.

Could another Grid Alert happen Sunday?

There has been no alert on Sunday so far, but there is still another early evening peak consumption hill to climb.

“We're doing our absolute best to ensure that does not happen," Sollid said. "Albertans can help us where they can, but again, we're seeing  high power demand because of the cold."

Sollid said the last time the province had to go to rotating power outages because of an overloaded electricity grid was in the summer of 2013.

NO BACKUP

Nathan Neudorf, Alberta's minister of affordability and utitlies, said the event was triggered by a number of factors, "including very low wind production.

"And obviously, when the sun goes down, low solar production," he added.

"If it's not windy or not sunny, which we happen to hit more often in the winter," he said, "then we're at this deficit of generation, and we have to rely on our jurisdictional partners. That, coupled with the size of the cold front, coming down from the north, it impacted B.C., Saskatchewan, Montana, Idaho and all of their generation was pulled in different directions, so we didn't have that backup that we've had in the past."

Neudorf also praised Albertans for their rapid adjustment that helped the province avoid rotating power outages.

With files from Tyler Barrow