Quote:
Originally Posted by oil pan 4
With the drastic proposed rate increase of 14.4% I take that as renewables such as wind and solar are not cheaper than what they have been using.
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My apologies for the length of the reply. Verbal diahreah is my default
SaskPower tried out the egg-beater style wind turbines years ago. And they did not handle gusts very well. None of the test units survived the 1 year test. All ended in catastrophic failure.
There are a couple of small solar pilots in progress. There are at least 2 'standard' on-shore wind pilots in the south west of the province, where it is usually windy.
I don't have inside info - my guess is that they are a bit gun-shy after their previous disastrous wind pilot. Solar can reduce the need for peaker plants (most of ours are natural gas turbines) in the summer. The low angle of the sun in winter does not give great power production .. se we need to make the installations bigger. Our baseload is coal and has been for 50+ years.
Our last new coal plant was commissioned in 1990. Since then there have been life extension projects for the existing coal plants. The last coal plant that was de-commissioned was in the mid 90's. There have been about a dozen new natural gas turbines (+15% or so) and one larger natural gas power station (+10%) built since the 90's. There are a few small hydro units in the far north of the province, but not a large percentage of our power use.
There are lobby groups working to get renewables in the mix, at the political level and at the educational level (for power company executives)