Gas pumps freeze at Calgary gas stations [video] | Hacker News Reader

Gas pumps freeze at Calgary gas stations [video]

calgary.citynews.ca

101 pointsbilsbie220 comments

As someone who lives in Calgary, a few random points:

This is normal weather for us for a week or so every year. Some years we have longer snaps. Some years we have shorter snaps. When things get this cold, everything has a hard time functioning, including but not limited to infrastructure, people, vehicles and utilities.

The electricity infrastructure in the province is poorly maintained and managed by the government and corporations that manage it. We have failed to invest in infrastructure that can handle both peak summer and winter loads.

We received an emergency alert yesterday night describing how the grid was nearly at capacity. I wouldn't be surprised if we got another one today. The reason appears to be that both wind and gas generation are offline due to cold. Pool prices for electricity spiked to $1000/MWh (!).

Electric vehicles would destroy the current grid because it's not even managed well enough to handle a barely electrified fleet of civilian vehicles. There's an argument that the EVs could act as a battery for the grid, but that would require significant technology investment that the province is not managed well enough to implement.

There will still be arctic outflows even if the planet is warming up. Our winters will continue to suck despite the average global temps rising.

Short story: the province is very cold, very badly managed, and there is not much anyone can do about it.

Wouldn't batteries have poor performance in these conditions anyway?

Probably not so bad in garages?

Looking at Canadian census data for AB, I'm not sure what the correlation of owning an EV and having access to a garage would be, but it's not going to be a super common combination.

In those situations, how likely is someone to want to use potential vehicular range during a crisis and instead use it on juice for their home?

I have a garage and an EV, but we haven't had the budget for the necessary electrical work to power the house.

You don't think that the kind of person who can afford an electric car can afford a garage to put it in?

Most, if not all new builds have attached garages in the Edmonton area.

You're completely forgetting the demographics of people who rent, live in apartments, lease cars etc. You're also assuming everybody wants an EV or feels it is appropriate for the distances they need to travel.

Are there really that many apartment dwellers without access to a parkade in Alberta?

Low-rise apartment buildings without parkades are very common in Calgary and (I assume) Edmonton. Block heaters, extension cords, and high-quality ice scrapers are standard fare.

https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/as-sa/98...

It looks like most Albertans live in a place where they have access to a garage for their car.

I would imagine that many Albertans who live in an apartment also don't drive, or have access to a parkade.

I'm not an EV driver but from what I've heard from others, and at least with current battery technology, range is significantly reduced.

I've seen a number of reports that Tesla ranges specifically are quite low at this temperature. I don't know if battery life rebounds when the weather improves.

Gas engines also struggle to start in this weather and gas lines freeze, though they obviously throw off enough heat to eventually grudgingly function.

Yup range is reduced for all EVs. And of course range rebounds after the weather warms up; it's not like this temperature is enough to permanently damaging the battery.

But on the other hand, heating the cabin is and remains much quicker than ICE engines. If you drive short distances the driver's experience is much better.

Depends on the model. All EVs are affected to some extent. But some models deal with this better than others. A 30-40% range reduction is reasonable to expect with most cars at very low temperatures. This is not a permanent loss. The other thing that happens is that cold batteries don't charge very well. Many modern EVs have battery management systems that manage the temperature of the battery for this reason. This improves both charging and range.

Warming up the car of course costs some energy but it's a reasonable tradeoff. Some cars actually have heat pumps that make warming them up a bit more efficient. And of course a nice feature is that you can use an app to turn on the car so the car is nice and comfy by the time you get in.

So, it's not that black and white and EVs are pretty popular all over Scandinavia (Norway especially) and in the arctic circle where they have some pretty extreme temperatures every winter. Teslas are pretty popular there and have been for many years.

ICE cars also are affected by cold weather of course. You get range issues; maybe not as extreme as with EVs but 15-20% less efficiency is pretty normal. And they have all sorts of fluids besides fuel (brakes, coolant, oil, etc.) that can become problematic if it gets cold enough. Reliability is a much bigger concern than range with cold temperatures. And ICE cars have a lot more things that can fail when it gets cold.

Litium ion and all mainstream battery technologies are fluid based and cannot operate in extreme cold.

That's why EVs have a system to keep the battery pack warm.

The liquid electrolyte in EV batteries is typically a lithium salt + organic solvent. It doesn't freeze, and these batteries can actually operate in extreme cold. They just perform less well because the chemical reactions slow down.

(My personal experience with EVs in the cold only goes down to -10C, with the vehicle parked outside overnight, no charger connected. I saw no issues expect for increased energy consumption.)

The Albertan above was reporting a temperature of -32°C. Searching a few sites online, it was hard to find any data on that. -15°C meant 50% range. I'm guessing your car probably also has battery heating though. And so long as the grid was able to handle it (which does seem to be a problem from the comments above in Alberta even with their tiny EV fleet) most likely you'd just plug it in, and it would stay nice and warm all night with no range impact in the morning - at the cost of a bit of power..

To be fair, a lot of petrol engines, and certainly diesel engines will have trouble starting at those temps unless they are in top condition. "Plug in heaters" are the solution there as well, to keep the engine block warm. Diesels will also need fuel treatement or fuel heaters to keep the fuel from turning to gel.

I drove my EV by -30 on Norway this month. Keeping about 19 degrees inside was using a lot of energy as cars aren’t well insulated.

The range is bad in winter but fast charging produces a lot of heat in the battery, you can see steam going from below the car while charging, that can then be moved to the cabin after. So long trips aren’t that bad. But you spend more, for sure. And you need a good winter EV. A lot of EVs on the market are terrible winter EVs.

Also, you don’t keep the battery warm all night as it would waste too much energy, but you should pre-heat the battery if you want descent battery performances immediately after you drive. On my car, it takes a few minutes while connected to the wall. I can start it from the phone or program it.

May I ask for more precise anecdata: What EV is that? And which EV are worse for the colds snaps?

Around here it's -5 to -7, so much less severe and if I understood my wife correctly, the Ora has a ~20% drop in range. Still good enough for our use case, but when I'll replace my PHEV with a proper BEV this might be more relevant.

I didn’t name it to not sound like one of those owners but it’s the best selling EV: a Tesla model y. It also has a LG battery pack, that performs better in the cold than the Panasonic, CATL, or BYD batteries Tesla also use.

About the worse EVs for winter, that would be the ones with no or small battery heaters. The old imiev for example.

A 20% drop of range by -5 is pretty good. Your wife may enjoy a cold interior or trust the temperature display of the car AC.

Thanks :)

And oh well, ours would be pretty good then, but sadly I just got new data from her: 30% or 260km down to 160km, and the lowest temps for the last days were only 0 to -5 degC. Still good enough for her daily total of 60km. One big factor: The dealership didn't want to add the heat pump, and we didn't want to pay that extra in full for a car we would not keep anyway (plus we were lucky and could get the car from their stock).

Pretty crazy that the gas generation goes offline in the cold when part of Danielle Smith’s rationale for a moratorium on renewables was “grid instability” requiring further study. Seems she panders to oil & gas, but the populace can’t be happy with the price of electricity!

I don't think the population gets enough visibility into the price of electricity. Most of the population is on a fixed price plan and I don't understand the economics of it.

I'm certain we'll hear about the "wind freezing" but nothing about why the gas plants were offline.

Alberta is prime location for nuclear: remote, cold and environmentally stable. We could probably ween ourselves off gas plants in a few decades, build enough capacity for an EV-friendly grid and reduce emissions.

Why is cold good for nuclear, getting rid of waste heat? Would that advantage not apply to all heat-based power plants?

I believe it comes down to the much more efficient cooling processes, and the fact that you don't need to maintain as much input resource infrastructure as with gas

While a gas plant produces heat, the gas transport infrastructure may freeze, and you can have major cold start problems.

Out here in Ontario, the electricity “distribution” costs often outweigh the cost of electricity itself.

Is that because the generation is nuclear and hydroelectric and so lower cost than natural gas like Alberta?

The base load is nuclear but it isnt necessarily cheap.

The government tried to take away the hydro subsidies a couple years ago and a bunch of people who live in the middle of no where and use baseboard heating lost their shit so the government went right back to subsidizing it.

This is often the case in Alberta as well.

this ispretty coomon in Alberta for all services. Right now electricity is epensive but natural gas was costing as much or more to get to your house as the actual gas itself. There are a lot of governments and government owned/associated companies all taking a flat fee and then a % of your usage.

Here in Austin my usage cost is about $8-16 of a >$100 bill once you include all the fees, mandates etc. Meaning I can only swing my bill by about $8 by lifestyle choices.

What do you mean? The emergency alert went out at 6:30pm when it was dark (no solar) and no wind (not windy and/or too cold for wind turbines to operate). Having more of grid rely on solar & wind wouldn't help. Replacing fossil fuel sources (which the NDP gov't paid $2B to do) has made situation worse. Gas generation going off line is a separate issue.

Good points. Energy storage will be another big issue. Lithium batteries (and possibly others) lose capacity in colder weather. I think, since most batteries are developed for standard operating temps, maybe we need more research into developing a different battery chemistry that is primarily for use in colder climates.

Indeed, such a chemistry already exists: Lithium Titanium Oxide (LTO) batteries charge & discharge normally down to something like -40 degrees

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-titanate_battery

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2023/09/01/kstar-launches-all-in...

Been quite cold in Norway last few weeks, and the news just loves to write stories about electric cars / buses having problems in that kind of weather.

Of course it happens. But actually to a lower extent than ICE cars. The small 12v battery in an electric only needs to turn on the systems, and you're good to go with some reduced range. The 12v battery in an ICE will often have a hard time starting the motor in these temperatures. But that's not as news worthy..

Last week a cold snap hit Finland. A lot of electricity supply was offline due to maintenance. The peak price at Nordpool, Internordic electronicity market, hit 2.5 eur/kWh or 2500 EUR/mWh. This is 25x normal rate around 5c/kWh. The electricity demand flexed, being 30% under estimation/normal.

As a retail electricity consumer you can choose between market rate (hourly) or a fixed price electricity. Despite cold snaps, market rate saves long term.

Unless I'm misunderstanding youz it's 50x, not 25x:

2.5 EUR = 50 * 0.05 EUR

Thank you, too late to correct now

Exactly what happened in Texas in 2021.

The parallels between Alberta and Texas always amuse me for some reason.

Wishing you best luck during this event!

Just wait a couple of days and you might be saying Texas in 2024. We've made minimal changes to our grid since then.

Hopefully the duration and lack of significant snow during these events this year will minimize the chance of PTSD for us. We should only be seeing 3 to 4 days of below freezing temps where in 2021 we saw over a week.

ERCOT seems to be well-prepared (pun intended) for this cold snap.

It's the resource curse.

> Electric vehicles would destroy the current grid

I’m not convinced it’s a simple as that.

My EV chargers at night during low demand. The energy provider decides exactly when (they start and stop multiple times per night), and gives me a rate of 1/4 of the normal as a benefit.

My usage pattern is to charge every night, but I only use about 10% during a normal day. So on average I am close to fully charged at any one time, and can therefore go a week without charging.

There is also vehicle-to-grid as you described.

My national grid had so many people making inaccurate statements about EVs that they made a page specifically to address them: https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/journey-to-net-zero/ele...

>My EV chargers at night during low demand

Easy when EVs are 1% market share. If/when they are 25%+ you can't hide behind low demand at night time.

I don’t know all of the variables to calculate that properly, things like electricity savings from closing refineries and petrol stations are things I can’t calculate. I do see a lot of people spreading FUD on the topic that don’t know either so I’m interested in what your numbers are. What do you think the impact of 25% EV ownership would be?

Edit, from my article:

> Even if we all switched to EVs overnight, we estimate demand would only increase by around 10%. So we’d still be using less power as a nation than we did in 2002, and this is well within the range the grid can capably handle.

So let’s say for 25% of people converting we would have a 2.5% increase in demand on a daily basis. If we spread that over a 6 hour period then we then get back to 10% uptick during that 6 hour period.

Here is the total energy production in the UK over a week: https://electricityproduction.uk/total/?t=7d

I can see that a 10% daily average (4 Gigawatt) bump at night would still put us much lower than daytime, so demand would still be considered low.

Not sure of all my maths and assumptions, happy to hear other views.

Grids are constantly adding capacity to keep up with demand. It's not going to go from 1% to 25% overnight.

Right. From OP's comment I get the sense that the real problem is that Calgary's grid is poorly managed and may not be well placed to add the necessary capacity. For other, better managed grids in the world, you're almost certainly right.

Better managed = more expensive. Are electric customers ready for that?

Better managed is not necessarily more expensive in the long run, specially when tanking into account secondary benefits such as improved economy because companies that care about stable grids build factories there. But yes, short term it is more expensive.

It makes sense that we'd see temporary taxes, surcharges, and the like to upgrade the existing system. The question is: How long is "temporary"?

In the US, a century is NOT out of the question for a "temporary" tax:

> The Spanish-American War has been over for more than 100 years, and now so is the tax imposed in 1898 to help fund it. As of Tuesday, all phone companies selling long-distance phone service are legally required to eliminate the 3 percent federal excise tax on long-distance service, which had been established in 1898 as a luxury tax on wealthy Americans who owned telephones.

Ref from 2006: https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/telecom-tax-imposed-...

If think skilled management is expensive, just wait until you see what incompetence costs.

the HN crowd tends to be overzealous about the pace of change in several industries. Electricity here is a good example.

No, the electric grid is not constantly adding power capacity. In fact, capacity expansions are planned on the timescale of decades. the previous comment is accurate - everyone switching to EVs even on a single, 80 home street can cause havoc for which we are unprepared.

Unprepared but solvable problem.

The HN crowd is split across a lot of grids. Here are things my grid is doing:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sea_Link

https://amp.theguardian.com/business/2023/oct/09/worlds-larg...

IMO, the helplessness of the US people when they talk about electricity distribution is hearth breaking.

It's not even a "our society can't orchestrate this", but the opinion is usually "it's impossible for people to organize that way".

Weirdly makes me happier with how Australia is progressing, a real 'it could be worse' situation

> it became operational on 1 October 2021 ... was first proposed in 2003

Hardly disagrees with the "timescale of decades" remark parent is making.

But it does show that it changes though. If there is a 10 year pipeline with multiple projects in it then it’s not static.

My claim was that change on the electric grid is slow, moreso at the distribution level. No one is claiming that change doesn't happen so you are arguing against a strawman.

If there is a ten year pipeline, design decisions are made years in advance. Hence my claim that even a single street switching to EVs will cause havoc.

> No, the electric grid is not constantly adding power capacity.

My strongest interpretation of this was you were saying that no capacity was being added. Any other interpretation doesn’t make sense. Everyone already knows that grids don’t have new capacity added on a constant basis, so nobody would say it. Even if it went through a growth phase, that would stop at some point for any number of reasons.

I’ve done some calculations elsewhere in the thread that ( I think ) show that a 25% uptake of EVs in the UK all charged during the same 6 hour off-peak period would still not meet peak day demand. Even without those calculations I don’t see how you can claim a streets worth of EVs would cause havoc.

The single most challenging issue in conversations about these topics is the role of time in the electricity sector's design process.

The average home car charger is the largest consumer of power in a household, often by as much as 2x - 3x the next largest device. That next largest device is often a heat pump, radiant heat or electric stove. Calculations for the grid as a whole ignore the fact that there are local and regional capacity bottlenecks, where meeting demand becomes a problem and the solution requires years of planning.

The feeder running along my street assumes a maximum power at each house of 10 kW and that 33% of houses consume that peak power at the same time. Imagine now if all houses added a 7 kW car charger, all charging during the night, every night. That is the havoc i refer to.

It’s not a sustained draw all night for every car. I averaged 17kWh/day in the last week. My energy provider schedules the charge in 30 minute chunks. It will charge during the peak time if it wants too ( and I get off-peak charges).

Both the UK and US have this already.

https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/journey-to-net-zero/ele...

> Through smart charging EVs can in fact help to balance the system, helping consumers use green power when it’s plentiful (and often cheaper) and avoid times when there’s more load on the network. Vehicle-to-grid technology could even send that power back to the grid when needed.

> With this in mind, the UK Government has introduced Electric Vehicle Smart Charge Points Regulations, which ensure that EV charge points will have this smart functionality.

> Similarly in the US, Smart Chargers and Time of Use Rate programmes will support balancing the load throughout the day.

Here in NL there are continuous upgrades. Yes, the grid is stretched, and there are spots where commercial (or even additional residential) capacity is not available. But at the same time, the grid is upgraded on all levels, from street to international connectivity. It takes time, but EV's are no issue. Excess solar around noon is.

NL is smaller than West Virginia and very densely populated.

This entire thread started with a comment talking about how the grid hasn't been upgraded to keep up with demand. We've also all seen what happens in places like Texas during cold periods. Even beyond just demand, look at how California has a utility that regular burns down entire cities due to poor infrastructure and maintenance.

The entire thread started with a comment claiming that the cold ruins everything and the province is mismanaged so that's that there is no solution.

But that's not that, clearly there is a solution, and that's to start improving the grid and increase the use of EVs. When every house has a battery backup system and charging infrastructure, and they build more power generation capabilities, nuclear or green, then you will see a hugely more robust grid and cars that will actually work well in even the coldest months.

> that's to start improving the grid and increase the use of EVs.

Notably, one of these needs to occur before the other.

They can happen at the same time. Especially with programs encouraging people to build their own solar. I did that and at least in the summer months cover 90% of my power usage. Winter is more of an issue but this doesn't need to be in a bunch of discrete ordered steps.

> They can happen at the same time.

Ok, maybe I should have said "one of these depends on the other"

Yes, but they are not milestone events. They are trends in ongoing processes. You don’t need to finish A to 100% before you start B. They can run in parallel.

Is anyone denying this? You seem to be the only person introducing complications into the electrification of Calgary by having a weird polemic about EV cars you can't articulate.

"JeffSnazz 5 days ago | root | parent | next [–]

> that's to start improving the grid and increase the use of EVs. Notably, one of these needs to occur before the other."

The point was that while they are related, you don't need to wait for the grid to increase to also increase the number of EVs. They can happen in conjunction.

Solar is least effective when (in this case) demand is the highest - winter, especially during a big storm.

Cities are also the least effective place (in general) for solar, with lots of obstructions, higher density of demand, etc,

Sure, but, we're responding to someone in Calgary describing an overloaded electrical system in a relatively poor province, exceeding capacity during the coldest weeks of the year, as gas pumps freeze. Today.

On a long enough timeline, setting aside money, sure, we can add:

- add a backup battery to each house

- add charging infrastructure to each house

- build more power generation (nuclear or green)

I don't think that's in dispute, and I'm not sure what to call it. Not off-topic, but...just sort of ramming forward describing something obvious, but as if it addresses something topical.

Just a note that Alberta is not a poor province, and in fact has the highest GDP per capita of all the Canadian provinces. (Nunavut and the NWT have higher GDPs due to their large mining sector combined with tiny populations.)

We also have the highest electricity bills of any Canadian province.

The issue in Alberta is corporate grift and a hegemonic government that has a revolving-door arrangement with oil and gas companies.

With the way prices are dropping for solar and batteries. As well as how many electric grid monopolists are not willing to pay much too home owners for electricity we are not far from huge influx of home batteries.

the provincial government has halted new wind and solar projects for at least a period of time, while the federal government continues to clamp down on any attempts at new fossil fuel plants, hydro takes decades and nuclear is a non-starter. Your first sentence is categorically false here, when discussiong near-term demand increases.

Adding capacity to a grid is not like getting another rack of hard drives in server room.

That's not really true. US electrical consumption is down 30% since the 1980s. You can thank significant advancements in electronics and electrical equipment.

Many capacity projects are simply to replace aging, no longer economical plants.

LED lighting and VFDs have reduced demand quite a bit, particularly the variable frequency drives since 50% of all electrical use is powering induction motors.

Sorta. The Alberta Electric System Operator mentioned that there is an increased risk of power needs not being fully met in 2031 to 2039, in part because of some power plants being decommissioned near the start of 2030 and uncertainty if when their replacements come online (2036 to 2039) as well as uncertainty for of EV charging habits and rate of adoption. But also uncertainty but the major industries that consume a huge amount of power as well and how the power generation industry will react to demands imposed by that.

That being said the key word, "Uncertainty." They're the first to admit that they really don't know. Too many factors to consider, and these are some pretty smart people that do this for a living writing these reports.

Works fine in Europe where we have percentages like that already. The mistake people make is assuming that cars are charging all the time when they are at home. The reality is that average day to day behavior cause that to be more like once a week for many drivers and that drivers can pick the moment when they charge. On any given day you might only use a few kwh. Mostly the collective charging behavior spreads out a little.

Norway is an outlier with 15%. All other countries have 2-3% at most.

I'm curious about this consistent claim that electricity is at low demand at night. Perhaps this is less true of areas in the winter with electrically provided heat?

Here is the electricity production for the UK over the last week: https://electricityproduction.uk/total/?t=7d

Not sure how it is for other parts of the world. Maybe places with heat pumps like Norway are different? We have a lot of gas for heating.

The UK is heavy reliant on gas heating currently so only a small fraction of electrical energy on this graph is used for heating. With the switch to heat pumps and other forms of electrical heating the picture will change.

The switch to heat pumps will be glacially slow. I’ve had a look at doing it on my property and my mums and gave up due to the need to change the pipes and radiators. I suspect only new-builds will go that route for a long time.

In Calgary, the overnight temp is -27 F for tonight.

When the weather gets that cold, insulation and heating have a hard time keeping up.

Homes that have natural gas furnaces draw so much that utility companies have a hard time keeping the lines at full pressure.

People start using space heaters more and more, which moves the pressure to the electric grid.

The problem with the cold is that it is worse at night, so there's less spare capacity overnight than normal.

At least, this is what we went through in the upper Midwest a few years back. Right now it's -8 and things are running smooth as usual.

Do any houses use wood for heating, or at least as a backup for times like this? My brother had a wood stove with fireplace that is somehow installed in a way that it heats his ~2000 sqft, 2 story house. I think the system was expensive to install, but it's cheaper for him to use wood than the gas furnace. Granted it doesn't get nearly as cold here in Philly as it does in the midwest or Canada... lowest temp on the 10 day forecast is 14 degrees as a overnight low. Having a backup heat source that is completely independent of the grid is reassuring imo.

If I lived someplace where temperatures went that low I'd certainly want to have backup heat, regardless of what my primary heating system was. Either wood stove or at least a kerosene space heater and a supply of fuel.

Outdoor wood boilers are somewhat popular (don't help much without power though), but I'd hazard a guess that more homes than not just have a small backup generator rather than rely on any kind of wood heat.

Might be different elsewhere; propane is cheaper than the national average where I live, so my experience might be skewed.

Ottawa, ON, Canada: https://hydroottawa.com/en/accounts-services/accounts/rates-...

I can choose my rate plan.

  Regular:
  7PM-7AM+weekends = 8.7c/kWH
  11AM-5PM         = 12.2c/kWH
  7-11AM, 5-7PM.   = 18.2c/kWH

  UltraLow:
  11PM-7AM               = 2.8c/kWH
  W/end 7AM-11PM         = 8.7c/kWH
  W/day 7AM-4PM,9PM-11PM = 12.2c/kWH
  W/day 4PM-9PM          = 28.6c/kWH

  Tiered:
  First 1000kWH = 10.3c/kWH
  Over 1000kWH  = 12.5c/kWH

Does it matter? If the utility can control EV charging times, then all that is necessary is that non-EV demand varies significantly. I haven't heard anyone claim that electric demand is anywhere near constant.

It's a consistent claim because it is consistently true.

The world does not generally operate 24/7 -- parts of it do, but most of it does not. And we (humans) tend to sleep at night.

While we're sleeping, we use less electrical power.

I mean: Think of all the things you (or any other person) might do in a normal day. Just list them out -- mentally, on paper, or whatever. Regular things, like work or school, or laundry, or eating food.

And now, you have a list of stuff that you generally do not do when you're sleeping.

So now, it should be intuitively obvious that energy consumption is reduced at night.

Here's some charts for different regions of the US that demonstrate that demand is lower at night, consistently, across all regions and all seasons: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42915

And some data from Alberta (home of the frozen gas pumps being discussed here) that also shows this trend: https://www.aeso.ca/market/market-and-system-reporting/

And another link that shows it for the UK: https://electricityproduction.uk/total/?t=7d

How deep do you want to dig? https://www.eia.gov/electricity/gridmonitor/dashboard/electr...

Night is not low demand in a really cold winter. It’s hard to just throw on some electric blankets and turn off the house heat.

One correction - Alberta's wind turbines aren't generating power because the wind speeds are low, not because of cold. Wind speed around Edmonton yesterday was under 5 m/s and today as well. Most of Alberta's wind farms are around Pincher Creek where wind speeds are forecast to be below 5 m/s for the next few days. 5 m/s is important because it is around these speeds where most wind turbine start generating power.

Most wind turbines will run just fine at temperatures of -30 C with a few internal heaters for fluids and some electronics.

Canada as a whole is a badly managed failing country with the worst conditions out of all other developed nations. They hang on to a thin thread of "we are not like the US" but fail to understand that having real estate and mining resources cannot sustain a country forever. You need entrepreneurship, competition and risk taking.

And $500 a month health insurance, otherwise you are milking the States' investment in developing new medicine, essentially making Americans pay for the world's research.

Amusingly, us Americans then turn around and get our drugs from Canada because it's cheaper. Presumably because it's subsidized by your tax dollars.

It's a weird symbiotic relationship.

It's more likely that it's the company making weird regional pricing. And the price in Canada likely is lower due to the Government negotiating for the lower price.

Just my guess.

And yet objective studies of things like quality of life [1], access to medicare [2], and other metrics, always seem completely at odds with claims like yours. We may not be the top in all metrics, but we are far from the "the worst of all developed nations." Data sure is inconvenient when we're spreading hyperbole and misinformation on the internet!

[1] https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/rankings/quality-... [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5595214/

data lags tremendously.

Here's what the "Quality of Life" metric is based on and Canada's scores:

* A good job market - 98.4

* Affordable - 15.1

* Economically stable - 98.2.

* Family-friendly - 98.5.

* Income equality - 61.2.

* Politically stable - 91.8.

* Safe - 93.2.

* Well-developed public education system - 88.7.

* Well-developed public health system - 91.2.

Anecdotally, affordability and wealth equality (not income equality) are much better indicators of QoL. "Good job market" must be availability of jobs (which has certainly lagged since 2022, when this data is from), not pay relative to cost of living.

Myself and most working-class Canadians could do with a bit of political instability right now.

If by political instability you mean voting for the part with a big C that will only worsen your position and increase hate and discord among Canadians, then please find your "political instability" elsewhere. Ditto if you think "protesting" means harassing and attacking your fellow Canadians.

If you think "political instability" means voting for people who will actually fight for the poor, like the NDP, well, that's not going to cause much instability I'm afraid. But it will help you.

Political instability ideally takes the form of holding the government accountable for serving their corporate overlords rather than regular Canadians.

I don't think there's a party that represents my interests, but the NDP or Communist party (is this the big C you're referring to?) probably are the closest.

NDP is the only one likely to have any influence, but they aren't willing to put forth a serious critique of capitalism in their fight for social equity. Even if they won a majority, I don't think they'd make a dent in the housing crisis.

This isn't remotely true on any measure, but I'm definitely interested in seeing anything that led you to this conclusion. And I love tweaking Canada! I grew up in Buffalo!

Just as an example, we had a 4 day power outage here in Quebec last year in Montreal with a million people out of electricity. The only redeeming factor was that it wasnt during the very cold periods and that it was late in the winter, but still a 4 day outage in the second biggest city in Canada (2nd time it happened in the past 20 years though last time it lasted more than a week lol) is pretty dysfunctional but we Canadians have normalized said disfunction.

Compare that to how the Texas outages were covered and put under the spotlight even in our local media and it shows a good example of the "we are not the US!!" Mentality where we completely ignore our own issues even when they are worse than our neighbors.

In this case it's even worse since we should be more prepared and have a better infrastructure to handle freezing rain since it happens every year! While the Texas situation was an outlier. Yet, it was all about patting ourselves in the back about how we are so good at recovering from the power outage lol

Gonna call bullshit on this, and saying this as someone who was without power for nearly a week in both 2021 and 2023 in Texas due to cold weather.

After looking it up online, it looks like the April 2023 outage in Montreal was caused by an ice storm, which is what the issue was in the 2023 outage in Texas. Bad ice storms are going to cause power outage mayhem in pretty much any location where lines aren't buried. I actually started to get annoyed by people complaining about the authorities during Texas' 2023 outage: I have never seen that level of tree carnage everywhere, with many roads impassable due to downed trees and lots of folks with multi-thousand dollar cleanup bills for tree damage in their yards. I don't know if this was the same situation as in Montreal, but the fact is that ice storms are just brutal to electrical infrastructure pretty much everywhere.

This is in stark contrast to Winter Storm Uri in 2021 where the whole Texas grid nearly failed because of perverse economic incentives that discouraged investment in weatherization of power plants (the problem then was brutal cold, not ice). That definitely was poor management/governance, but at least it sparked some badly needed improvements to power generator regulations. Given we're currently getting an Arctic blast, we'll see how it holds up.

My point is that we have had multiple ice storms, and we have had the exact same problem happen before. We mitigated some of it, but still have had multiple trees and debris that fell right onto critical junctions. This is just as bad imo, remember that in 1998 we also had a month long outage that was due to the exact same reasons. I wouldn't expect Texas to be ready for a cold snap but I sure would expect our infra to be ready for an ice rain storm. To assume that it just isn't possible is again, very Canadian. Again, I would understand if it was a network wide failure that led to a grid collapse or something, but this is not the case.

In any case, if the same had happened in the US the media coverage and the mentality there would've led to a lot more introspection and self critique. And I know it sounds weird because Americans aren't exactly known for that, but compared to Canada? Yes they sure seem to be nowadays.

Another example that comes to mind was that here in Quebec we had one of the worse mortality rates in the world in the early days of COVID (something like triple our neighbors in Ontario and worse than new York) but we were still obsessed with covering how the US was going to soon be on the brink or something. Just as we had to send the army to nursing homes because patients were literally left to die. And you know what's the e overall conclusion about how COVID was dealt here in Quebec? That we did pretty good lol. We even reelected the same exact government all while that was happening with a stronger majority. That's the mentality I'm talking about here, of complete lack of introspection and a weird inferiority complex with the Americans.

> power outage mayhem in pretty much any location where lines aren't buried.

at least in austin a big part of it was a failure of the power companies to respond to tree/line interactions long before the storm. People reported trees across the lines. The branches got super heavy with ice and took out the lines. Proper maintenance / arborcare would have meant far fewer issues.

As a Canadian I agree. I lived in a popular area a few hours from Vancouver for 20 years, we had power outages all the time, this year there was 2 in a row that lasted long enough that everything in my freezer went bad. This area is also on boil water advisory 5-8 months a year. We also have plenty of native reservations with undrinkable water. None of that feels 1st world to me.

But check my population growth relative to my OECD friends ma.

> You need entrepreneurship, competition and risk taking.

Canada has had this in the past and IMO has faltered more recently.

RIM/Blackberry (ie pioneering elliptical curve crypto), Smart boards, Canada ARM for space, Candu reactors. We've had some pretty high tech inventions in the past. Waterloo was(/ is?) a pretty great tech school.

> Electric vehicles would destroy the current grid

If only the government wasn't openly hostile to new energy projects. Alas.

So Texas / ERCOT isn’t alone, and PG&E isn’t an anomaly.

This is everywhere.

Nah. Alberta is Snow Texas, and is owned, lock & stock, by oil and gas. They try pretty dang hard to follow the southern examples, and often succeed.

I think you are misattributing “doesn’t work the way I want” for “very badly managed”.

Investment has costs. Maybe not everyone wants to pay those costs, consumers included.

If you don't pay the investment costs, then you pay "Pool prices for electricity spiked to $1000/MWh" costs. It's certainly possible there are math-illiterate people who can't work out which path is better, but that doesn't mean it's not "very badly managed"

EV’s use next to nothing compared to heating

It averages to something like 500w vs 5kw of heating.

The majority of houses in the Canadian prairies do not use electric heat. Natural gas furnaces are the primary heating type. So they still use electricity for the forced air system, but far less than your quoted 5kW. Usually less than 600W

I’m wondering how much the green energy policy from Ottawa contributes to the problem in AB. If it’s like described that carbon tax prevent the operation of coal or gas powered plant, and how are those solar panel and wind turbines doing in AB right now.

I've long thought the tar sands/ SAGD should be powered by nuclear waste heat. That could easily create a bunch of extra capacity and increase the net barrels produced.

A first hit on a google search illustrating what I'm talking about- https://albertainnovates.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Pacif...

> We received an emergency alert yesterday night describing how the grid was nearly at capacity.

Interestingly, there’s currently a grid alert (not yet an emergency alert to every phone, TV…). I think that’s the third evening time grid alert in a row.[1]

There’s only 210 MW from wind currently, and obviously no solar (10956 MW total generation, 11407 MW total load, importing 451 MW from BC and Saskatchewan at 7:47 MST). [2]

But there’s supposed to be more gas generation coming online this year (2,700 megawatts)! [3]

[1] “The AESO declared a Grid Alert at 3:42 p.m. Sunday, January 14, 2024.” (there’s even a RSS feed!)

https://www.aeso.ca/aeso/understanding-electricity-in-albert...

[2] http://ets.aeso.ca/ets_web/ip/Market/Reports/CSDReportServle...

[3] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-alberta-poi...

For what it’s worth: “The Grid Alert ended at 10:12 p.m.”

Your logic seems to be broken: IF you have an EV car with something like 50-100kWh and you know that either you only travel short distance in such a week OR even stay at home, you can provide load support just by having the bi-directional loading controller checking the frequency of the power grid.

It could just stabilize it out of the box with minimal technical requirements.

It might even be easy in this case toa lert EV owners to do one or two plug ons and offs manually for the grid.

Loading the EVs slowly before the weather or when the other load is gone, could also help supporting the peak usage.

I'd like to give a shout out to SaskPower and SaskEnergy, the crown companies that responsible for electricity and power in Saskatchewan. They're not perfect, and it's easy to gripe about them, but on the whole I'm very happy with the service we receive.

Also see SGI for auto insurance and SaskTel. We pay less for better service than anywhere else in Canada.

This was partly abnormal for us in that our DAYTIME temperature has always risen above -30C in the past 19 years.

We had a few days this cold spell time where it did not, this hasn't happened since Jan 27th, 2004.

If you haven't already seen the video don't bother. There is no interesting visual of frozen gas pumps, just stock footage of gas pumps and people using ones that aren't frozen while a voice over says that some were freezing and that nothing could be done but to wait for them to unfreeze. The video adds nothing.

I could hear the significant apathy in the gas station attendent's voice even though their comment was narrated by the presenter. That was nice.

> just stock footage

> The video adds nothing

This seems to be the case more often than not. Who is the intended audience for these videos and what's the motivation? Usually they don't contain ads, and just suck bandwidth and take money to cobble together, so I don't see how anyone benefits.

It's originally meant for TV broadcast, so they need some kind of footage even if they have nothing relevant.

> Who is the intended audience for these videos and what's the motivation?

There may have been ads if you lived in Canada

Frozen gas pump is probably the most boring video possible, you squeeze the handle, and gas trickles out at a rate of a penny every couple seconds.

A reddit thread with anecdotes from EV owners during this cold snap:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Calgary/comments/194yg8x/how_are_yo...

General consensus was that while some models lost ~40% of their range, the cars were more than adequate for getting around the city, even when parked on the street overnight.

from CBC, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/ev-cold-nort...:

====

In 2023, Seattle-based firm Recurrent measured range loss in EVs at temperatures between –7 C and –1 C, and found 18 popular models had an average of 70 per cent of their range in freezing conditions, though there was a wide discrepancy depending on the vehicle.

Starting with a full charge, Vejvoda's long-range 2020 Tesla Model 3 predicted he'd get to McBride with five to 10 per cent charge remaining.

Instead, he said, the vehicle did better than expected and had about 25 per cent when he reached the charging point.

He said the vehicle had about a 40- to 50-per-cent loss in efficiency.

[stuff deleted]

"That just goes to show that these cars have come a long way … but [this loss] would be the worst-case scenario," he said, adding he's only seen eight per cent loss during regular city use in –20 C weather.

"The highway is not where an EV shines to begin with … and it's going to have more trouble because of the air flow under the battery being so cold."

Rowell says it's important to note gas vehicles also lose efficiency in cold weather as frigid temperatures can affect fuel economy.

====

Could the "better than expected" aspect be partially because once the car is travelling there is heat generated within the bottom of the vehicle from both the engines and the battery use. Presumably that may warm up the area to a higher temperature.

I'm confused by all this. I grew up in alberta (fort mcmurray which is north of calgary). I don't live there now. While obviously this is cold, it is not abnormally cold weather. Growing up we had weather on par with this or maybe a little colder at times. I dont remember gas pumps ever freezing. What gives?

Maybe the ethanol blend, especially if it has water in it?

Probably a mechanical failure with the pump

Based on the article and other comments, it sounds like it's actually freezing. What other mechanical failure would happen and the resolve itself as it got warmer?

I'm suggesting the pump is frozen and not the gasoline. I pump gas in -40C every year. This weather is normal.

Isn't the gasoline the only liquid in the pump? What else could be frozen?

Nothing unusual, same thing happens every year; some years it's just a day or two where it gets cold enough to be an issue (so that most people don't notice the issue with the pumps because they didn't need gas that day), some years it lasts a week or two.

Yeah I agree. Saskatchewan here. It's brutal out but it happens every year. Was introspecting on the obvious necessity of preparation that the harsh outside world illuminates.

Wild stuff.

We often read concern trolling about how BEVs will fail and struggle in winter climates but the reality is that ICE vehicles need a fair amount of special care in the winter as well, and the infrastructure is also fragile. This story here a remarkable example of that.

Was chatting with my Dad about all this and he brought up his war stories of trying to get an ICE car to start in a Winnipeg winter.

God help you if you didn't plug in the block heater.

God help if you did get your car running but ended up stranded by the roadside somewhere. Road travel in Canada in deep winter is a serious exercise in risk management, your life may well be on the line.

In some arctic locations, they keep the gas pumps fully enclosed and heated, with only the hoses accessible from the outside. You need to go in a little shed to swipe your card and select the grade.

One example: https://www.go2moon.com/image/DaltonHwy/Dalton-S3.html

That's a clever solution!

I’m from a hot place and moved to Calgary a couple of years ago.

I’ll never forget my first time driving in a cold snap like this. It was -35C and I forgot to plug in my gas powered car. It started the second time, but it drove so weirdly for half an hour. I think the various transmission fluids and lubricants must’ve been frozen or extra viscuous.

But at least it worked! Would not want to be stuck in the mountains in an EV unless it had a propane tank or 800km range or something.

Yep, even with a manual transmission in neutral you can feel the lubricant viscosity bringing up the clutch at -30C. My car's outside temperature display doesn't show temperature below -30 and it takes time for the radio to start working. Seat warmers are really appreciated as you don't need to wait for the engine to warm up enough to heat the interior.

Block heaters run about 400W. It helps a lot to have a garage. When it's this cold, I also run a battery charger as living in a walkable neighborhood, I can go several days without using my car and the battery sags in the cold.

a charger like a trickle charger? Or do you mean a warmer (like diesels have those battery blankets) ?

…did you drive it immediately after staring it? Barring any emergencies I always wait minimum 10 minutes in cold weather to let the fluids warm up and cycle through.

I had a Honda Hybrid in Northern Ontario and it took a lot of planning to keep that car working during the coldest period of the year. Usually the dash would completely fail even if the engine would run and it took 1/2 hour or so for the car to properly warm up. I ended up keeping it indoors and only to roll it out just prior to a drive (and let it warm up outside to avoid CO2 poisoning).

Gasoline itself freezes at -75°C/-103°F.

I gather the temperature in Calgary is around -30°C. So I presume it's the pump infrastructure that can't handle the cold, not the fuel itself freezing (which would also impact vehicles).

I used to live in Ottawa where it got that cold at least once a year (I remember skiing in Tremblant once at -40°C) and their pumps still generally managed cope - at least before they started getting LCD screens.

Gasoline can freeze well above -75°C/-103°F, it all depends on the actual composition and various additives. And even if it's not frozen it can be so sticky (viscous) that you can't use it anyway

Or it could have water in it. There's always some water in retail fuel. The pumps have filters to capture it, but if they freeze the fuel can't flow.

The water tends to pool at the bottom of the tank due to gravity. Source: former gas station owner. At -40 C the bigger issues are: pump lubrication, metal becoming brittle, shrinkage of parts made of different metals causing friction and wear (but this does tend to heat up the mechanism!), electronics malfunctioning. That's why we had very old pumps without any electronics at all and those functioned very well in deep winter, as long as we had power (for which we had a backup diesel generator). Not a single lost day of business in the four years that we owned that station. Far more modern stations nearby on highway 17 were doing much worse.

No gas station in canada will have summer gas in the pumps in january, the switchover happens in september.

Vehicular gas infrastructure is near 100 years of development and still has some edge cases.

EV charging infrastructure is at about 10 years.

The good news is we haven’t forgotten all the lessons learned, many of which will be applicable.

In cold climates, EVs should absolutely include a propane tank to generate passenger heat and bring the battery into its proper operating range. Generating high entropy heat with low entropy electricity from a battery offends my sensibilities.

As someone that drives an EV in cold weather, a propane tank for heat would be a huge improvement.

As long as you don't want to ever make use of underground parking.

Most modern EVs have heat pumps. Not using heat pumps to generate heat - exploiting the larger than 100% efficiency you get in the process - offends my sensibilities.

If we have propane, and want to use it for energy/heating, it’d be better to burn it at some large central efficient generator (perhaps supplying waste heat as district heating for nearby homes), and use the electricity to power heat pumps.

Don't heat pumps stop working around -25C? That is obviously not going to be effective in alberta. (Current temp -36C [not including windchill])

The windchill actually only affects humans - moist skin cools down faster in the wind.

But -36 is enough to bring down heat pump efficiency a lot.

This site [1] talks about heat pumps that work down to -30. Not good enough to trust your life to if you’re an Albertan.

[1] https://www.bchydro.com/news/conservation/2022/cold-weather-...

> Not good enough to trust your life to if you’re an Albertan.

I believe the heat pumps intended for these climates provided alternatives for those cold days. If you want to stay all electric, it would include a resistive electric heater, but could be paired with some other fuel source.

Personally, I'd seriously consider going ground source where temperatures like this are the norm, but that doesn't work for everyone either.

That may work for your house, but it really doesn't make sense for the emergency heat source of your vehicle to also need an emergency heat source.

At -40C, the COP is only going to be 1.4. A natural gas fired cogen plant is 60% efficient so even without transmission losses this ultra complex arrangement is not more efficient at generating heat.

You are conflating the efficiency of generating mechanical energy (where such arguments hold) with generating heat.

It could just be a secondary battery with cold compatible chemistry with just enough energy to warm up the main battery.

A 20lb propane tank is a 100 kWh battery (if only generating heat).

> In cold climates, EVs should absolutely include a propane tank to generate passenger heat

I believe some EV buses are heated with propane or heating oil, so it would probably be feasible to add to personal vehicles as well.

Propane freezes at about - 38.

Liquefies. It's almost impossible to use at that temp though because you burn propane gas.

Works in propane powered cars down to -40C.

https://propane.ca/for-my-business/auto-propane/#:~:text=Exc....

Good EVs can heat up their battery pretty fast using only electricity.

I know someone who was using a diesel heater in its Mitsubishi I-miev, an old EV that had a terrible factory heating system. It did sound a lot less convenient than electric heating.

Absolutely? Maybe adding a propane tank, the systems to use propane to heat the passenger compartment and battery safely, the complexity refuel it, the extra mass, the extra maintenance, being banned from some underground parking...

I get your sensibilities to be efficient but I think overall it's not efficient or a great idea to add propane and propane accessories to EVs.

That's why I didn't get an EV until I bought my home.

For anyone wondering gasoline freezes around -40c or -40f, never knew this myself until now.

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