Leningrad II-1 reactor assembled

Alberta Renewable Energy Auction invites bids as AESO adds wind and solar capacity, targeting 5,000 MW by 2030, with 400 MW online by 2019 to replace coal, stabilize prices, and cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Key Points

A program to procure wind and solar for Alberta’s grid, replacing coal and scaling to 5,000 MW by 2030.

✅ 400 MW online by 2019 to backfill retiring coal units

✅ Timed additions to avoid price distortion on the grid

✅ Targets 5,000 MW of renewables by 2030

The operator of Alberta's electricity grid will start taking bids at the end of this month from companies interested in generating and selling renewable energy in the province.

The provincial government wants to add 5,000 megawatts of renewable electricity, supporting new jobs across the province by 2030.

The renewables, including wind power and solar power, will replace coal-fired power plants, which will be shutting down as part of the province's strategy to lower greenhouse gas emissions.

Energy Minister Marg McCuaig-Boyd announced Friday the first competition will be for 400 megawatts, which is enough to power about 170,000 houses.

"We're known as the energy hub of Canada, and make no mistake, green energy is a big part of that," she said.

Mike Deising with the Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO) says the new green power has to be developed gradually.

The new green power must be developed gradually, says Alberta Electric System Operator’s Mike Deising. (CBC)

"We don't want to put on too much generation because what we're going to see is, if we have too much generation all at once, we're going to drive down the market price and it's going to distort the electricity market that we have," he said.

Deising says from their perspective as the grid operator, they want to make sure the addition of new capacity is timed with when they are losing capacity.

AESO wants the 400 megawatts of new green power including solar generation to go onto the grid by the end of 2019 to replace electricity from coal-fired plants that will start shutting down by late 2020.

Related News

• Electricity Forum News

• Renewable Energy News

NB Power Hydrogen-from-Seawater Project explores clean energy R&D with Joi Scientific, targeting zero-emission electricity for Belledune using Bay of Chaleur seawater, hydrogen production, and possible carbon credits within Canada's climate plan.

Key Points

An NB Power R&D initiative with Joi Scientific to produce hydrogen from seawater for zero-emission power at Belledune.

✅ Targets coal phase-out by 2030 at Belledune

✅ Evaluates costs, efficiency, and carbon credits

✅ Seawater-to-hydrogen tech via proprietary R&D

NB Power is betting $7 million on a promising but untested new way to generate electricity without emitting greenhouse gases: turning seawater from the Bay of Chaleur into energy, a marine approach similar to Nova Scotia's Bay of Fundy tidal tests in recent years.

CEO Gaëtan Thomas talked last month about converting the Belledune generating station to hydrogen power by 2030, after coal is phased out, though some argue planning should be led by an independent planning body to ensure long-term oversight.

But the public utility is tight-lipped so far o

"Unfortunately, it is too early in the process to be discussing details of this research and development project," said NB Power spokesperson Marie-Andrée Bolduc.

Joi Scientific's vice-president of marketing, Vicky Harris, said in an email statement that the company is "involved in multiple research projects, in many different sectors, but, as I am sure you would understand, we are not sharing details of our proprietary research and development work at this time."

On its website, the company calls hydrogen "the universe's most abundant element and the world's cleanest source of energy."

In its collaboration with Florida-based Joi Scientific, a start-up headquartered at the Kennedy Space Centre.

What to do with Belledune?

The federal government has set 2030 as the deadline for provinces to phase out coal-powered electricity under its national climate plan, and NB Power has pursued deals to import Quebec power as part of its transition.

NB Power says other options for Belledune include burning natural gas or biomass, and small nuclear reactors have been discussed provincially as well. But those options would still generate some carbon dioxide emissions.

Green Party Leader David Coon said last month that it was "news to me" that hydrogen power could be generated affordably enough to use in a power plant.

University of New Brunswick chemical engineering professor Willy Cook says turning hydrogen into energy is simple, but it's not necessarily cost-effective because the process itself requires a lot of electricity, while Nova Scotia is pursuing more wind and solar to meet its goals.

"You can't get something for nothing," he said. "Using electricity to produce hydrogen to go back to the process to produce electricity--that in itself probably isn't economically viable."

But he said he's not familiar with Joi Scientific's technology and it's possible the company has come up with "a more efficient process."

He also said if NB Power earned carbon credits for reducing emissions, hydrogen technology might become competitive with other energy sources.

"I have faith in the NB Power engineers to come through and do that assessment properly," he said.

Related News

• Electricity Forum News

• Power Generation News

Labrador Hydro Open Access could enable non-discriminatory electricity transmission through Quebec, unlocking wheeling rights for Muskrat Falls and Gull Island, boosting green energy exports to Ontario and U.S. markets under interprovincial trade rules.

Key Points

Applying open, non-discriminatory transmission rules so Labrador power can wheel through Quebec to U.S. markets.

✅ Aligns with U.S. open access and non-discrimination standards

✅ Enables wheeling rights for Muskrat Falls and Gull Island

✅ Expands export routes to Ontario and Northeast U.S. grids

There's growing optimism that hydroelectric power from Labrador may soon be flowing through Quebec and into other markets in Canada and the United States as demand grows.

That was one of the revelations in a new interprovincial free trade agreement that was unveiled Friday.

If such an agreement on electricity transmission were reached, it would open the door to huge markets for Labrador hydroelectric power, including excess power from the controversial Muskrat Falls Project, and possibly end a bitter stalemate that has long soured relations between the two neighbouring provinces. 

"The best-case scenario is we move electricity through Quebec and into markets. It could be Ontario among others. It could be the U.S. It could be anywhere," Ball said Friday.

Rules based on principle of open access

The new trade deal sets out specific rules around the transmission of electricity across provincial borders, and are based on open access and non-discrimination rules in the United States.

The Muskrat Falls transmission network will bypass Quebec in moving power to the North American market, but at a considerable cost, though a ratepayer agreement aims to shield consumers. (Jacques Boissinot/Canadian Press)

Those rules allow Quebec to freely export electricity from the Upper Churchill and other power sources into the U.S., and Dwight Ball says this province wants the same rules to apply to power from the Muskrat Falls project, and potential projects such as Gull Island.

As part of the trade talks, Ottawa and other provinces asked that Newfoundland and Labrador and Quebec engage in talks about electricity transmission, including what are known as wheeling rights, and related rate mitigation talks are ongoing. Ball said that will happen.

"I'm not here to pre-judge what the outcome will be. All I'm saying is if there's an opportunity to bring benefit to our province we want to be at that table," said Ball.

"Right now we're seeing support from other provinces. We're seeing support from the federal government. We believe in using the resources that we have to support a national policy on green energy.  And if that leads us into a development in Labrador, so be it. That would be a good thing for our economy. But we have to get at that table first."

Deal comes into effect in July

The new, open access rules will come into force if either of the two provinces sign off on them within 36 months of the trade deal coming into effect on July 1.

It's nearly a certainty that the Ball government will endorse such a framework, since the province has long argued for permission to use excess transmission line capacity in Quebec to send Labrador power to other markets.

"You could argue that the U.S. rules would apply right now, but we all know that's not happening in the way we'd like to see it happen," said Ball. "So we're going to get at the table and see if we can get that access more streamlined." 

As part of the trade deal, both Newfoundland and Labrador and Quebec will maintain their monopolies over power production and the right to sell it, which means Labrador power can only be transmitted through Quebec.

Related News

• Electricity Forum News

• Energy Policy News

Peter Sutherland Sr. Generating Station delivers 28 MW hydroelectric, renewable energy in Ontario via an Indigenous partnership, on-budget and ahead of schedule, supplying the provincial grid near the Abitibi River at New Post Creek.

Key Points

An OPG-Indigenous hydropower plant generating 28 MW in northern Ontario, feeding the provincial grid from New Post Creek.

✅ 28 MW hydropower on Abitibi River at New Post Creek.

✅ OPG and Taykwa Tagamou Nation partnership, on-budget and ahead of schedule.

✅ $300 million project delivers jobs, skills, and long-term revenue to community.

Ontario Power Generation, which has also partnered on new nuclear technology with TVA, says a new hydroelectric plant in the northern part of the province is now online, and the First Nation it has partnered with stands to benefit.

In a written release issued Friday, OPG announced the completion of the Peter Sutherland Sr. Generating Station on New Post Creek. The project is a partnership between the provincial power company and Coral Rapids Power, an Indigenous-owned company of the Taykwa Tagamou Nation, near Cochrane.

"This project has gone well due to the relationship we've built on a foundation of respect and trust," Coral Rapids President Wayne Ross was quoted as saying in the OPG release.

"There have been many benefits for our community including good paying jobs, transferable skills and a long term revenue stream."

The generating station, which is located about 80 kilometres north of Smooth Rock Falls, near where New Post Creek meets the Abitibi River, is named after a respected elder of the Taykwa Tagamou Nation. It generates 28 megawatts of power for the provincial grid, according to OPG, complementing modernization at the Niagara Falls powerhouse upgrade as well.

The project was finished ahead of schedule and on-budget, OPG said, as other Ontario initiatives like a pumped storage project advance.

According to the announcement and recent financial results, the project cost around $300 million.

Related News

• Electricity Forum News

• Power Generation News

Grid Inertia and Stability underpin synchronous generation, frequency control, and voltage resilience, with virtual inertia, fast governor response, and hydro ramping mitigating oscillations when gas turbines or large generators trip or interconnectors fail.

Key Points

Grid inertia and stability show how synchronous assets resist frequency swings and damp oscillations in AC grids.

✅ Synchronous machines and loads collectively stiffen system frequency.

✅ Fast governor, hydro ramps, and virtual inertia arrest deviations.

✅ Excess inertia is costly; smart controls can replace part of it.

The discussion on inertia and synchronous generation is rather confused. Inertia is necessary because it provides stability to the grid. “Strength” and “stiffness” are terms that are used to show that lots of rotating inertia is “good’ or even essential to a stable grid. Because it was free it is often assumed that the system needs as much generator inertia as it always had, though some argue for keeping electricity options open to manage reliability during transition.

But inertia is just one way to supply stability and it can be argued that beyond more than a certain minimum level, generator inertia is an expensive and anachronistic way of providing stability.

Stability is required to protect timing circuits, minimise mechanical loads on motors and generators caused by changing speed, prevent overheating of inductive loads like AC motors and most of all to prevent voltage/frequency oscillations after fast changes in load or generation e.g. from a loss of a connection or generator or even start-up of all the hot water services at 10PM.

Inertia is one simple way of providing stability because the rotating mass of the generators absorbs or disburses energy by small changes in speed.

While the inertia of turbines is large, it is only useful as a store of energy if you can use it.  Most of the energy stored in a rotating turbo-generator is unavailable because the energy is 1/2Jω2 where ω is the angular velocity and J the rotary inertia. As the angular velocity is only supposed to vary by 0.15Hz in 50Hz you can only use 0.6% (49.85/50)2 of the inertia in the system to stabilise the load. Even if a 1Hz short term deviation is allowed it is still only 4% of the system inertia.

The key to stability is not so much the inertia itself but the synchronous nature of an AC system which locks all the turbines and loads together at the same frequency, thus inertia is not just that of one generator but all the synchronous generators, the capacitance of the transmission and distribution network and even all the AC motors and loads on the load side. These later contributors are still there, even if some of the generation is no longer synchronous, and recent low-carbon electricity lessons emphasize system-level coordination.

The downside of inertia is that once it is given up it must be replaced. So, if system frequency falls by 1Hz, to recover the frequency a large fraction of the output response from the remaining generators is used just to spin all the generators and loads back up to speed rather than just supply lost power to the grid. In the best case, it will prolong the frequency disturbance. In worst case the extended frequency deviation will trigger protection circuits and more widespread faults.

In a conventional system inertia provides the first 0.1-10 seconds of load disturbance response and it was free. A steam plant is quite good for the next 3-6 seconds after a disturbance because there is a quantity of steam in the steam chest which can be released quickly.

If the lost generation stays off line steam is then limited because it has slow ramping after that first steam dump. Hydro comes up after 20-150 seconds but has excellent stability and very fast ramps, especially in pumped storage hydro configurations where response is rapid. The combination of inertia of water in the penstock and rotary inertia of the generator gives very stable ramping and for large scale power changes, hydro seems to offer the best combination of ramp rate and stability.

Gas turbines respond quite well after 8-30 seconds, then ramp quickly if they don’t stall or oscillate which they are prone to do at low loads. It is clear that “the straw that broke the camel’s back” in the SA blackout was the failure of gas turbine generators at the Quarantine station to respond properly to rapidly increasing demand, a contrast to California shutdowns that raised questions about grid management practices.

However, even if inertia is seen as desirable at the plant level, gas turbine plants have no more inertia per MW than wind and many of them are operated slaved to the largest generator(s) because it is simpler and more efficient, and recent moves like new Ontario gas plants aim to boost capacity.

But if the key large generator(s) are for some reason isolated from the grid, the gas turbines will sag under the increased load and they will have limited mechanism or perhaps, if they are already at full load, even capacity, to respond. So, within fractions of a second their frequency will start to fall just as quickly as a group of wind turbines.

Even if governor response is fast, maximum stable ramp rates are around 5-10% per minute usually starting at less than that (they tend to have S shaped response curves) Gas turbines have another weakness which means that their inertia is of less value to the grid.

If frequency falls the compressors slow down reducing compression ratio and thus power so even more so more of the governor response is needed just to compensate for reduced air flow.

Related News

• Electricity Forum News

• Power Generation News

SaskPower Geothermal Power aims to deliver renewable baseload energy in Saskatchewan, complementing wind and solar. With DEEP's 5 MW pilot near Estevan tapping aquifers, it supports grid reliability alongside LED streetlights and flare gas.

Key Points

SaskPower Geothermal Power is a baseload plan using DEEP's aquifers to deliver zero-emission power in Saskatchewan.

✅ 5 MW DEEP pilot near Estevan targets hot sedimentary aquifers

✅ Provides 24/7 renewable baseload, complementing wind and solar

✅ Higher upfront costs and timelines challenge rapid deployment

It would be a first for Saskatchewan and Canada.

SaskPower‘s efforts to double renewable electricity by 2030 could potentially include geothermal power stations.

 Regina and Saskatoon areas were selected to provide a range of settings to test the new LED streetlights SaskPower is piloting. SaskPower pilot project converting streetlights to LED

 The second project in SaskPower’s flare gas power generation program is contributing 750 kilowatts of electricity to Saskatchewan’s power grid. SaskPower turning waste flare gas into electricity

 SaskPower reporting power outages in some regions as high winds sweep across Saskatchewan. SaskPower launches homeowner energy efficiency assessment tool

“If projections hold true, we’re going to need to find over 2,000 megawatts of renewable power,” Kirsten Marcia, president and CEO of Deep Earth Energy Production (DEEP), said.

“Geothermal is not the only solution here, but we hope to have a very significant place at the table.”

With a power purchase agreement with SaskPower signed in May, and ongoing initiatives such as purchasing power from Flying Dust First Nation to diversify supply, DEEP hopes to build a five megawatt, zero emission power plant near Estevan, where subterranean water is the warmest in Saskatchewan.

Typically, geothermal operations use the water for heat, as in Manitoba's geothermal homes initiative where thousands of residences would be converted; however DEEP’s plant will pass water through an exchanger to create steam, which will drive a turbine and generate energy.

“You think of our potash resources, our oil and gas resources, and at the very bottom of those sedimentary units is thick, 150 metre deep aquifer,” Marcia said. “We could drill it here in Saskatoon, but it’s too shallow to be hot enough, and the same aquifer continues to deepen as we go towards the United States, it’s about 3.4 kilometers in depth, so that’s what gives it the heat.”

But is investment in geothermal power generation worth it for the province? Experts say they’re cautiously optimistic, but initial costs may drive away potential interest, which is why SaskPower is also planning to buy more electricity from Manitoba Hydro as a complementary measure.

“The payback period is going to be much longer,” said Grant Ferguson, an associate professor of geological engineering at the University of Saskatchewan. “So we’re going to run into problems with risk and financing and these sorts of things that might not be in play with something like a wind or solar project.”

Time is also a factor.

Each unit is expected to generate between five and 10 megawatts of power; multiple unites would be required to generate the amount of power needed in Saskatchewan. Nearly a decade of work has gone into DEEP’s first station.

“If we’re looking towards 2030 and we’re taking 10 years for one, then it’s going to take a while to pull all this off,” Ferguson said.

“Maybe if it's on the space of two or three years then we can build these things up.”

The benefit geothermal electricity has over solar and wind generated power? Electricity is consistently being generated, even during record power demand events in Saskatchewan.

“Ideally, this becomes a baseload power supply,” Marcia said, “so unlike wind and solar, which provide an intermittent power supply, geothermal is the only renewable that provides power 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”

DEEP’s first plant is expected to be built in two years. It’s expected the aquifer will be able to support a capacity of roughly 200 megawatts.

Related News

• Electricity Forum News

• Power Generation News