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Alberta

Boxing Day Special! Alberta had free power for several hours, and that’s not a good thing

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6 minute read

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Brian Zinchuk

Imagine, if you will, a Boxing Day sale where everything was free for everyone across every store at the same time, for several hours.

And imagine if in early morning hours of Dec. 26, Best Buy, Staples, Walmart, and indeed every single store in the entire economy got paid precisely zero dollars for their wares for several hours that morning.

Preposterous, you say!

Indeed, it did happen, in Alberta’s free-wheeling unregulated electrical market. The pool price, as recorded by the Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO) was $0.00 per megawatt at 4-7 a.m., and from 11 a.m. until noon.

And as a pool price, that means unless there’s some other contract going, that’s the price all generators get paid.

I might not have an MBA, but I’m fairly certain no business model in the world can survive getting paid nothing at all for their product for terribly long. If McDonalds, Burger King and Tim Horton’s all gave away their breakfasts on Dec. 26 to all comers, they couldn’t do it for long before someone would realize this is idiocy and shut the doors.

So what was happening during those wee hours in the morning, as the Boxing Day shoppers were in line for their flat screen TVs? It was quite windy in Alberta.

X bot account @ReliableAB, which logs hourly reports of the AESO minute-by-minute reporting of the grid showed that wind generation was just a hummin’. For several weeks, Alberta wind power has been been frequently pumping out high numbers, often in excess of 70 per cent of its nameplate capacity. One would think this would be a great thing, right? It’s finally doing what it’s supposed to do.

At 4:38 a.m., @ReliableAB reported Alberta’s now 45 wind farms were putting out 3,508 megawatts of the installed capacity of 4,481 megawatts while the pool price was zero.

At that point, wind was generating a full 33 per cent of total generation, which again, sounds like great news.

It was during one of the deadest periods of economic activity in the whole year, the night after Christmas. Demand in Alberta was low, with an internal load of 9,632 megawatts. The lack of demand happened to coincide with lots of surplus power being dumped onto the grid.

(As it was still dark, solar wasn’t a factor.)

What to do? How about sell as much as you can?

And that’s what happened. Alberta was pumping out 995 megawatts of power exports to its neighbours, 967 megawatts to BC, 26 to Saskatchewan, and two megawatts to Montana.

This situation is also the converse of what I’ve been reporting on over almost precisely 24 months, the frequent collapse of wind power generation in Alberta. Almost every time that has happened, the pool price shoots up, often hitting $700, $800, $900 or even the theoretical maximum of $999.99 per megawatt hour. If the maximum was $2,000, I’m willing to bet it would have hit those heights, too. And the integral under that graph – what consumers get on their bill – is horrendous.

So here we have renewable, “green” power in surplus, driving prices down for everyone, and so much so that it can benefit the neighbours, too.

But therein is the fundamental problem. No one, not Best Buy, McDonalds or Capital Power can produce product for nothing, and definitely not for extended periods. There is a cost to generating power, be it capital or fuel or operating costs. Nor can they sell their products, be it flat screen TVs, hamburgers or electricity for next to nothing, either. The entire economic model will collapse, and then what? Who will provide the power then?

When I wrote my first story on Alberta wind power on Dec. 28, 2021, the province had 2,269 megawatts on nameplate wind generation capacity. It’s now double that, at 4,481 megawatts, a level where big swings in wind power production have a huge impact. And Alberta’s last coal plant will switch to natural gas in a few months.

And there’s more wind coming. Oct. 24, the Calgary Herald noted, “More than 3,500 megawatts of renewable power generation projects are now under construction in Alberta.

“By the end of August, the AESO received 74 wind and solar project applications after the moratorium was announced, (Premier Danielle) Smith noted.”

What’s going to happen when all that comes online, when Alberta will have around 9,600 megawatts of wind and solar, almost equal to daily demand? Will the grid be flooded with power so cheap that reliable, dispatchable power generators can’t stay in business, only to see prices skyrocket when wind and solar inevitably fail, as they frequently do, and at the worst times?

Sounds like a recipe for utter chaos. And blackouts.

Brian Zinchuk is editor and owner of Pipeline Online, and occasional contributor to the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. He can be reached at [email protected].

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Alberta

Alberta introduces bill banning sex reassignment surgery on minors

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From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

Alberta Conservative Premier Danielle Smith followed through on a promised bill banning so-called ‘top and bottom’ surgeries for minors.

Alberta Conservative Premier Danielle Smith made good on her promise to protect kids from extreme transgender ideology after introducing a bill banning so-called “top and bottom” surgeries for minors.

“It is so important that all youth can enter adulthood equipped to make adult decisions. In order to do that, we need to preserve their ability to make those decisions, and that’s what we’re doing,” Smith said in a press release.

“The changes we’re introducing are founded on compassion and science, both of which are vital for the development of youth throughout a time that can be difficult and confusing.”

Bill 26, the Health Statutes Amendment Act, 2024 “reflects the government’s commitment to build a health care system that responds to the changing needs of Albertans,” the government says.

The bill will amend the Health Act to “prohibit regulated health professionals from performing sex reassignment surgeries on minors.”

It will also ban the “use of puberty blockers and hormone therapies for the treatment of gender dysphoria or gender incongruence” to kids 15 and under “except for those who have already commenced treatment and would allow for minors aged 16 and 17 to choose to commence puberty blockers and hormone therapies for gender reassignment and affirmation purposes with parental, physician and psychologist approval.”

Alberta Minister of Health Adriana LaGrange, the bill’s sponsor, said the province’s legislative priorities include “implementing policy changes to continue our refocusing work, position our health care system to respond to pressures and public health emergencies, and to preserve choice for minors. These amendments reflect our dedication to ensuring our health care system meets the needs of every Albertan.”

Earlier this year, the United Conservative Party (UCP) provincial government under Smith announced  she would introduce the strong pro-family legislation that strengthens parental rights, protecting kids from life-altering, so-called “top and bottom” surgeries as well as other extreme forms of transgender ideology.

With Smith’s UCP holding a majority in the provincial legislature, the passage of Bill 26 is almost certain.

While Smith has done far more than predecessor Jason Kenney to satisfy social conservatives, she has been mostly soft on social issues such as abortion and has publicly expressed pro-LGBT views, telling Jordan Peterson that conservatives must embrace homosexual “couples” as “nuclear families.”

This weekend, thousands of UCP members will gather for the party’s annual general meeting, where Smith’s leadership will be voted on along with many other pro-freedom and family policy proposals from members. Smith is expected to pass her leadership review vote with a large majority.

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Alberta

Alberta court upholds conviction of Pastor Artur Pawlowski for preaching at Freedom Convoy protest

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From LifeSiteNews

By Clare Marie Merkowsky

Lawyers argued that Pastor Artur Pawlowski’s sermon was intended to encourage protesters to find a peaceful solution to the blockade, but the statement was characterized as a call for mischief.

An Alberta Court of Appeal ruled that Calgary Pastor Artur Pawlowski is guilty of mischief for his sermon at the Freedom Convoy-related border protest blockade in February 2022 in Coutts, Alberta.

On October 29, Alberta Court of Appeal Justice Gordon Krinke sentenced the pro-freedom pastor to 60 days in jail for “counselling mischief” by encouraging protesters to continue blocking Highway 4 to protest COVID mandates.

“A reasonable person would understand the appellant’s speech to be an active inducement of the illegal activity that was ongoing and that the appellant intended for his speech to be so understood,” the decision reads.

Pawlowski addressed a group of truckers and protesters blocking entrance into the U.S. state of Montana on February 3, the fifth day of the Freedom Convoy-styled protest. He encouraged the protesters to “hold the line” after they had reportedly made a deal with Royal Canadian Mounted Police to leave the border crossing and travel to Edmonton.

“The eyes of the world are fixed right here on you guys. You are the heroes,” Pawlowski said. “Don’t you dare go breaking the line.”

After Pawlowski’s sermon, the protesters remained at the border crossing for two additional weeks. While his lawyers argued that his speech was made to encourage protesters to find a peaceful solution to the blockade, the statement is being characterized as a call for mischief.

Days later, on February 8, Pawlowski was arrested – for the fifth time – by an undercover SWAT team just before he was slated to speak again to the Coutts protesters.

He was subsequently jailed for nearly three months for what he said was for speaking out against COVID mandates, the subject of all the Freedom Convoy-related protests.

In Krinke’s decision, he argued that Pawlowski’s sermon incited the continuation of the protest, saying, “The Charter does not provide justification to anybody who incites a third party to commit such crimes.”

“While the appellant is correct that peaceful, lawful and nonviolent communication is entitled to protection, blockading a highway is an inherently aggressive and potentially violent form of conduct, designed to intimidate and impede the movement of third parties,” he wrote.

Pawlowski was released after the verdict. He has already spent 78 days in jail before the trial.

Pawlowski is the first Albertan to be charged for violating the province’s Critical Infrastructure Defence Act (CIDA), which was put in place in 2020 under then-Premier Jason Kenney.

The CIDA, however, was not put in place due to COVID mandates but rather after anti-pipeline protesters blockaded key infrastructure points such as railway lines in Alberta a few years ago.

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