Albertans have been asked to conserve electricity to prevent a power outage following an unexpected grid generator malfunction.
The Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO) issued a Grid Alert on Tuesday evening, which stated that emergency reserves are now being used to maintain system reliability.
“Consumers are asked to reduce their electricity use during Grid Alerts to help mitigate the possibility of undertaking more serious emergency measures to balance the system, including rotating power outages.”
According to the AESO, alerts can be caused by different factors including extremely cold or hot weather, the time of day and wind conditions, which impact the availability of solar and wind-generated energy, as well as unplanned generation facility outages.
“During a Grid Alert, the AESO takes a variety of actions to maintain reliability, including using emergency reserves, reducing or suspending exports or energy sales, cancelling transmission maintenance, and implementing voluntary curtailment programs (participants are asked to reduce their energy use to predetermined levels), and requesting emergency imports. As the last option to maintain reliability, the AESO can initiate temporary rotating power outages.”
An AESO spokesperson told Global News there were two primary reasons the system was under enough stress to prompt the alert: an unexpected generator outage and a planned outage of the Alberta/B.C. interconnection, which meant Alberta could not import electricity to make up the shortfall.
