Alberta got itself into an energy pickle this week as several of its natural gas plants were not fully operating due to planned maintenance and frigid temperatures which put some gas power stations partially or completely offline. Alberta's ageing grid also let it down somewhat, and imported power from BC was not available to help out.
And to the rescue: solar and wind generation, which eased the strain on the provinces system. And don't let's forget, good old-fashioned energy conservation - alerts were sent out asking consumers to reduce their energy load, and that works just fine (people really responded to the call to cut power usage). Between them, rolling blackouts were avoided.
Of course, Premier Danielle Smith, a great opponent of renewable energy for reasons that no-one really understands, had her own take on the situation. She blamed renewables for creating the problem, claiming that it is their unreliability during cold snaps of this kind that led to the energy crunch. Er, no, sorry, that's not how it happened.
A simular situation played out in Texas. Three years ago, Texas suffered a catastrophic power outage in freak cold weather in which over 200 people died. Republican Governor Greg Abbott of course blamed those unreliable renewables, but in fact it was because natural gas power plants stopped functioning and pipelines froze up.
Three years on, and Texas has a lot more wind and solar power and battery storage available, despite Abbott's best efforts. So, when temperatures plummeted again in Texas just recently, renewables and batteries were instrumental in keeping the power on. Despite those unreliable has plants...
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