2y ago

Critical emergency alert issued as Alberta’s power grid put under strain

globalnews.ca

Critical emergency alert issued as Alberta’s power grid put under strain | Globalnews.ca

Canada @lemmy.ml

☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆ @lemmy.ml

2y ago

Critical emergency alert issued as Alberta’s power grid put under strain

globalnews.ca /news/10224558/alberta-grid-alert-day-two-polar-vortex/

14 comments

Texas of the north.
space heaters
The least efficient/most expensive way to heat air.
- Care to elaborate? A space heater draws 1500 watts of electrical energy and converts it into 1500 watts of heat energy that is released into the room. That seems pretty efficient to me.
  
  A heat pump can take 1500 watts and use it to pump 3000-4500 watts of heat out of the ground loop and into your house.
So, is Danielle smith going to try and blame it on the little sprinkling of renewables that currently is active?
- Meanwhile Québec runs on 95% renewables, and we've not had grid load problems in decades. We have problems with trees taking out the power lines, but we've never been asked to turn it down despite most people having electric heaters.
  They're always blaming renewables, but so far renewables is the one I've had the least amount of issues with, and by far the cheapest too. My energy bill is 5x the amount in the US and it's barely freezing. It's all fossil fuels, of course, the supposed cheap and reliable.
  Renewables are great except for the big oil companies.
  
  I mean, they would point out that you have a ton of hydro power potential that we don't. I would counter that we were drawing from the battery storage plants we have during that period, which were themselves charged up by the solar plants (since there's no reason to charge a battery off of a gas plant).
  How to cheaply store renewables is kind of a trillion-dollar question right now, but I'm sure it will be answered. At the very least, we're good at drilling into things and could make some nice pumped air plants.

14 comments