What are the lessons learned from Alberta’s emergency power alert?

globalnews.ca:

The emergency alert that Albertans received on Saturday night shows how much work is going to be needed to adapt to future demand according to Alberta’s utilities minister and electricity experts.The alert, issued by the Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO), urged Albertans to reduce electricity usage to essentials only to prevent rotating outages. The alert came a few hours after AESO declared a grid alert due to extreme cold, high demand and low imports.On Sunday afternoon, AESO declared another grid alert for the third day in a row, asking Albertans to reduce electricity to essential use only.“We were concerned at one point that we were going to run out of emergency reserves and have to go to rotating outages,” said Leif Sollid communication manager for Alberta Electric System Operator.He said the last time Alberta saw rotating outages was during the floods of 2013.There was a significant drop in electricity demand almost immediately after the alert was issued.

It was ended about two hours later“I am tremendously proud of Albertans and very grateful that so many stepped up at a time of need,” said Nathan Neudorf, Alberta’s minister of affordability and utilities.Alberta was receiving electricity from B.C., Saskatchewan and Montana on Saturday night but BC’s ability to export was curtailed.“They were in a real crunch. The Pacific Northwest was in a real crunch.

We were in a real crunch. Everybody was chasing the same electrons in our region and we got just enough,” said University of Alberta energy economist Andrew Leach.Several power plants were offline either because of planned maintenance or because of the extreme weather.Tim Weis is an industrial professor with the Faculty of Engineering at the University of