EMERGENCY ALERT — This is an Alberta Emergency Alert issued by the AEMA. This alert is in effect for AB. Extreme cold resulting in high power demand has placed the Alberta grid at a high risk of rotating power outages this evening. Albertans are asked to immediately limit their electrical use to essential needs only. Turn off unnecessary lights and electrical appliances. Minimize the use of space heaters. Delay use of major power appliances. Delay charging electrical vehicles and plugging in block heaters. Cook with microwave instead of stove.
A Yukoner in Alberta received that message during the recent cold snap.
Residents of Whistle Bend may recall the surprise outage at -38C on Dec. 20, 2022, when Yukon Energy systems were overwhelmed by unanticipated electrical demand.
Text messages calling for voluntary action seem like a rudimentary way to manage such a foundational service as electricity. People may not read their texts. They may ignore them.
Other critical industries don’t do it this way. If there is a gasoline shortage, prices go up. If there is a disaster, mobile phone networks in most countries automatically give priority to calls from emergency agencies.
From this point of view, it is interesting that the price of electricity is always the same in the Yukon. It costs you the same to turn on your dryer all year round, whether we have surplus solar power at noon in July, the full fleet of diesels going at -40C in January, or an Alberta-style emergency shortage.
This is a problem for the Yukon grid, since its hydro, wind and solar plants have natural seasonal and time-of-day peaks and valleys.
Governments use prices to shape demand in other areas. Want more business investment? Make it cheaper with a business tax credit. Want people to consume less alcohol and marijuana? Put high taxes on booze and weed.
When the feds took the carbon tax off home heating oil, territorial ministers made some strong arguments about the importance of maintaining the “price signal on fossil fuels.”
Many jurisdictions in the U.S. and Canada use price incentives, such as time-of-day electricity pricing. In Nova Scotia, peak pricing is 23.18 cents per kilowatt-hour. The lowest off-peak price is less than half that.
In parts of California they have Save Power Days. Participating homeowners who reduce electricity use on peak days can earn up to US$100 in bill credits. You sign up, set your alert preferences and the utility tells you the day before when they expect a peak day. The more energy you save between 2 p.m. and 6 p.m., the more credits you get.
The other electricity market where prices are strangely static is solar generation. As Ben Power, CEO of local solar installer Solvest, wrote in an oped two weeks ago, independent power producers get paid a flat rate no matter the time of day or year.
The Yukon government recently halted the Yukon Microgeneration Program. Among the concerns with the program are grid stability as large amounts of renewable power are added and that much of the solar power (including my panels) comes in the summer when we often have surplus hydro.
POWER Magazine cites a project that generates 40 per cent of its power at times when there is a grid surplus, and is paid for this power. Which sounds silly. Until you realize that this is what the government’s design of the pricing scheme is signaling them to do.
According to POWER, if the price was higher in the shoulder season then the industry would tilt and space its panels differently. Tuned correctly, a Yukon solar farm could produce 70 per cent of its power during “winter/low water periods.”
But while prices are effective for managing routine peaks and valleys, they are less so during emergencies. If electricity prices surged to 10 times higher than normal at -40C, instead of transformers bursting into flames it might be your utility bill.
This is where utilities combine pricing with the electrical equivalent of how mobile phone networks automatically prioritize emergency providers.
They call this “direct load control.” The utility puts a remote control in your house so that it can directly control your hungriest appliances, such as car chargers or hot water tanks. You can override it if you really need to do the laundry at dinnertime at -40C.
In Florida, a utility offers homeowners up to US$137 per year to sign up for the program and it pays up even if it never needs to turn down the homeowner’s hot water tank.
Here, Yukon Energy has a proto-version of this called Peak Smart. The difference is that it doesn’t pay you.
A recent ad in the paper touted the program this way: “All the advantages at no cost.”
Which is like me saying you can have the advantages of shoveling my driveway at no cost.
Hopefully some public-minded individuals have volunteered to save Yukon Energy money on its diesel bill. If the Yukon government wanted more uptake on this, they should share the savings with Yukoners.
The emergency text above prompted Albertans to cut power use by 200 megawatts within a few minutes. Which is sizable, but only 1.6 per cent of peak demand. The Alberta grid operator also contacted major industrial users, who ramped down demand by an unknown but likely significant amount.
Here in the Yukon, we have fewer major power plants and fewer big industrial users. We might need more than a 1.6 per cent reduction during some future power crisis.
So next time you drive past Yukon Energy’s growing diesel fleet at Schwatka Lake — or get an emergency text asking you to cook with your microwave instead of your oven — you can wonder why they haven’t put a time-of-day meter in your house or a remote control on your hot water tank. Even my decidedly low-tech home-heating-oil tank now texts the fuel company when I run low. And the cost is low compared to the benefits of improving grid stability, reducing costly diesel usage and reducing the need for expensive new power plants.
Keith Halliday is a Yukon economist, author of the Aurore of the Yukon youth adventure novels and co-host of the Klondike Gold Rush History podcast. He won the 2022 Canadian Community Newspaper Award for Outstanding Columnist.