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Comment by voisin | Hacker News Reader

Pretty crazy that the gas generation goes offline in the cold when part of Danielle Smith’s rationale for a moratorium on renewables was “grid instability” requiring further study. Seems she panders to oil & gas, but the populace can’t be happy with the price of electricity!

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I don't think the population gets enough visibility into the price of electricity. Most of the population is on a fixed price plan and I don't understand the economics of it.

I'm certain we'll hear about the "wind freezing" but nothing about why the gas plants were offline.

Alberta is prime location for nuclear: remote, cold and environmentally stable. We could probably ween ourselves off gas plants in a few decades, build enough capacity for an EV-friendly grid and reduce emissions.

Why is cold good for nuclear, getting rid of waste heat? Would that advantage not apply to all heat-based power plants?

I believe it comes down to the much more efficient cooling processes, and the fact that you don't need to maintain as much input resource infrastructure as with gas

While a gas plant produces heat, the gas transport infrastructure may freeze, and you can have major cold start problems.

Out here in Ontario, the electricity “distribution” costs often outweigh the cost of electricity itself.

Is that because the generation is nuclear and hydroelectric and so lower cost than natural gas like Alberta?

The base load is nuclear but it isnt necessarily cheap.

The government tried to take away the hydro subsidies a couple years ago and a bunch of people who live in the middle of no where and use baseboard heating lost their shit so the government went right back to subsidizing it.

This is often the case in Alberta as well.

this ispretty coomon in Alberta for all services. Right now electricity is epensive but natural gas was costing as much or more to get to your house as the actual gas itself. There are a lot of governments and government owned/associated companies all taking a flat fee and then a % of your usage.

Here in Austin my usage cost is about $8-16 of a >$100 bill once you include all the fees, mandates etc. Meaning I can only swing my bill by about $8 by lifestyle choices.

What do you mean? The emergency alert went out at 6:30pm when it was dark (no solar) and no wind (not windy and/or too cold for wind turbines to operate). Having more of grid rely on solar & wind wouldn't help. Replacing fossil fuel sources (which the NDP gov't paid $2B to do) has made situation worse. Gas generation going off line is a separate issue.

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