Suncor Energy Inc T.SU

RE:solar and wind nothing burger

[mrbb]

From the Bob Oil Guy site                          Jan 12, 2024

We had an emergency alert at 7 pm last night to reduce power consumption immediately, or risk power outages. It was -39 C last night.   I realize that the power grid is more complex than wind, solar and coal plants, but still.
Most of Alberta’s wind fleet slowly shut down Thursday night, but not for lack of wind



As cold temperatures descended upon Alberta’s wind generating assets, you could identify when they shut down due to the temperature, as shown in red. That’s a lot of red, across the 45 wind farms in Alberta. Dispatcho.app,
UPDATE: By 7:28 a.m., wind output fell to less than 1 per cent of capacity

One of the first lessons any new engineering student learns in their materials class is “cold brittle behaviour” of materials. When it gets really cold, like -30 C or colder, many materials lose much of their strength and are prone to shattering. This applies to wind turbines as much as it applies to car bumpers.
And as a result, most wind turbines are shut down when the ambient temperatures reaches around -30 C, lest their continued operation cause them to shatter. And such shutdowns were plainly evident the evening of Jan. 11, on both the Alberta Electric System Operator website and on Dispatcho.app. That’s a website that logs the minute-by-minute data published by the AESO regarding the Alberta electrical grid.