Yesterday, when we picked up our mail, we found a copy of an expensive brochure “ALTALINK : Report to communities,” 14 pages, on high-quality, non-recyclable, heavy-weight paper, with many colour photos. Five of the photos feature wind turbines, while a few portions of the report identify the growth and proliferation of wind turbines, collectively called “wind farms” by ALTALINK.  It remains up to anyone’s imagination how it is possible to farm the wind, but the brochure must have cost a fair bundle.  AltaLink could have saved the effort and built a few miles of transmission line instead.

It is not clear what that brochure — apparently distributed to all Alberta households — is intended to achieve, other than to make people believe that everything is good about ALTALINK and their endeavors, e. g.: to connect wind turbine installations to the electricity grid.  ALTALINK does not involve itself in electricity generation.  It only installs and maintains the high-voltage transmission network used to connect all of Alberta’s electricity distributors to sources of electricity generation.

ALTALINK is Ralph Klein’s brainchild, an offspring that is the product of his party’s imagination in search of increased revenues, the deregulation of the utility industry that immediately brought much higher electricity rates to all consumers of electricity in Alberta, especially to residential and small-business consumers, after all of the large electric energy consumers and retailers had already secured long-term energy contracts. (It is in the news today that [1] Ralph Klein is suffering from a serious, rapidly-progressing, incurable form of dementia.)

I will not discuss in detail all of the claims presented in “ALTALINK : Report to communities,” but I will discuss only some of the claims that misrepresent facts of wind-power generation and pricing of electricity rates.  [2] A much abridged version of the brochure is accessible on the Internet.

Wind-Power Generation

Page 3 of “ALTALINK : Report to communities” states:

Connecting wind power — Albertans now have access to twice as much wind power as a result of AltaLink’s Southwest 240 kV Project. Energized in October 2010, this 90-kilometre transmission line between Pincher Creek and Lethbridge allows for 1,000 megawatts of wind‐generated electricity to reach homes and businesses throughout the province. That’s equal to powering 1,600 homes each month.

Participation of the local First Nations communities, the Piikani and Blood, was essential to the success of the project. Significant employment was created by this project and more than 80 Alberta businesses supplied services or materials.
([3] Source URL)

How wonderful!  Still, that claim suffers from a few problems.  According to AESO (Alberta Electric System Operator), the total wind-power generating capacity in Alberta is 777MW, of which often as little as 0MW and hardly ever even close to its maximum generating capacity is being produced and put on the grid. At the time I am writing this, the grand total of 67MW out of the total nominal and much-advertised 777MW wind-power generating capacity is being produced.  You can [4] verify what the wind-power generated in Alberta is at any time you wish to look it up.

However, only a fraction of the wind-power generated in Alberta and put on the grid comes from the Pincher Creek area at any time.  The total wind-power generated in the Pincher Creek area is currently 0MW,  and the 67MW generated through wind power in Alberta come from a single source that is not in the Pincher Creek area.  It is the Ghost Pine Wind “Farm” in Kneehill County, in the Drumheller area.  The Ghost Pine Wind “Farm” has a maximum generating capacity of 82MW, and the construction of a 140kV transmission line to connect it to the grid was completed not all that long ago.

A lot more of Alberta’s wind power generated does not come from the Pincher Creek area.  That means that perhaps at some point in the future there may be a total of a 1,000MW generating capacity installed in the Pincher Creek area, but, unless a lot more Wind-Power generating capacity will be installed in the Pincher Creek area in the future, it will not be required.  The “90-kilometre transmission line between Pincher Creek and Lethbridge” that “allows for 1,000 megawatts of wind‐generated electricity to reach homes and businesses throughout the province” will not be required until the power it is intended to transmit can and will actually be generated.  The transmission line is most definitely not required right now.

I wonder why ALTALINK did not say so in their promotional brochure.  What the heck, it is only money that we consumers pay for right now through our power bills, and there is no shortage of that money coming in, right?

Talking about money, the lower-left-hand corner of page 5 of  “ALTALINK : Report to communities” contains a pie chart that breaks down the price of the good deal Ralph Klein gave us on the electricity rates we must now pay. I will translate that chart into plain English.

Breaking Down an Average Electricity Bill

Generation
The cost you pay for the electric energy you have used in a given time period: 56%

Administration
Cost that you pay for administration charges such as fees related to billing and customer service: 7%

Distribution
The cost your distribution company charges you to build, operate and maintain the local distribution system: 27%

Transmission
Cost that TFOs, such as AltaLink, charge to build, operate and maintain the provincial power system: 10%

I know, you don’t pay your electric energy bill in percent, you pay for it in dollars.  So, let’s make those figures a bit more meaningful.  The total electricity cost in terms of percent is quite useful for that.

56% of what you pay for electric energy consumption pays for the cost of electricity generated and put on the grid.  That is roughly 2.4 cent or $0.024 per kWh you consumed and includes a reasonable margin of profit for the generating companies.

46% of what you pay for electric energy consumption is for AltaLink and the distribution company that bring the electric energy from the generating companies to your house.  That is roughly 1.9 cent or $0.019 per kWh of electric energy you consumed and includes the cost of all of the overhead and a reasonable margin of profit for those services.

The total cost of the electric energy you consume and of the services required to bring it to your home is about 4.3 cents or $0.043 per kWh consumed, including a reasonable margin of profit for all involved in doing it and billing you for it.  That is it!  No more and no less.  That is all there is.

You probably pay a substantial amount over and above that for each kWh you consume.  That is money that will not go to waste.  It will provide a clear profit over and above all who are feeding on your wallet, including the Government of Alberta.  If you pay 8.6 cents or more per kWh consumed, you pay an extra 100 percent or more over and above what is required to provide for the costs and a reasonable margin of profit for all who so generously bring you your portion of the lifeblood of the nation: electric energy.

However, in all of that, remember that included in what you pay for electric energy is something the powers never tell you about. Electric energy generated from wind power is not free.  It is one of the most expensive forms of energy imaginable.

The electricity grid has no spare capacity at any time.  When the wind does not blow, and when the beautiful wind turbines that spoil the skylines in increasingly more Alberta locations turn, just idling away to keep themselves from seizing up, without producing any power for the grid at all, and often consuming power just to stay healthy, something must take up the demand, and spare capacity must be put on line.  If not, then there will be brown-outs and even black-outs.

Other than generating more hydro power (which we don’t have much of), a natural-gas-fired power generating plant is easiest to put into operation.  It takes up to about three hours to be on full production.  Coal-fired power plants take a lot longer, up to three days to be on full generating capacity, which is why they are being kept on spinning standby, consuming fuel all the while when not required to produce electric energy, so that they can be put into full production on short notice, which is still too long for comfort.

Spare capacity that can be put on the grid instantaneously when the wind does not blow constitutes unscheduled demand and drives up the price of electric energy into the lofty neighbourhood of $1000 per MWh, which means a cost of up to a full dollar per kWh to bring it on the grid.  With the convenient percentage figures that AltaLink provided on page 5 of their promotional brochure, it is not hard to figure what the consumers must pay for that, namely two or more dollars per kWh.  However, the pain of paying for that is made easier to bear by making you pay for every kWh you consume a good portion more than it is worth.  A $1000 per MWh spread over all of the kWh you consume during the year works out to just a few cents per kWh consumed but can be a substantial portion of all of the cost of the electric energy you consume throughout the year.  It just depends on when, how often and for how long the wind does not blow.

Yes, when it comes to electric energy generated by wind, the wind does not come free of charge.  The only thing that is free is death, and we all must pay for that with our lives.  However, we can do something about paying the enormous profits made by many from wind power generation.  We can begin to ask the powers to stop pulling the wool over our eyes.