How's the fossil fuelled, most privatized & wildly ballooning in cost energy grid in Canada also closest to failing in cold snaps? #DanielleSmith laughably blamed renewables but jokes on her: Alberta's grid stinks because of her & #JasonKenney's #UCP
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A few days at -30 is surreal enough without having to figure out what it might mean for you & 4.4 million other Albertans if the power were to go out. This is #LifeAndDeath stuff. Possible rolling blackouts at -30 means you need a plan & it needs executing, toot suite
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Just a few months ago Alberta Premier #DanielleSmith
noisily plunked down 8 million taxpayer dollars fearmongering to all of Canada about EXACTLY THIS happening if we upgrade grids. Smith has no shame but for we Albertans with brains it's another national humiliation
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Surreal because EXACTLY THIS has been their bête noir for some time now. #DanielleSmith's bozo wrangler Rob Anderson warned deadly blackouts in -30 was what we could expect if we elected Rachel Notley. With Smith elected that danger's now OFFICIALLY never been closer
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#BlackoutsAtMinus30 goes back further than that to Notley's NDP & they're the one's that got it right: it's the status quo grid that was the threat in cost & functionality, & fixes are desperately required. UCP ripped out the fixes & made it all worse
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/ucp-aeso-weather-electricity-capacity-1.7085201
In 2019, the recently-elected United Conservative Party pulled the plug on plans to establish what's referred to as a capacity market for the province's energy system. Would it have helped avoid the challenging conditions last week's extreme cold posed?
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As a universally reviled Premier, Kenney did everything he could to make our energy grid as profitable as possible to privately owned utilities like #ATCO at the expense of ordinary bill-paying Albertans. Removed from office he's now on the ATCO board 🤷
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Then energy minister (and later somehow equally catastrophic as Alberta's Environment and Protected Areas Minister) #SonyaSavage described those price spikes you're now paying at historic levels as "a necessary and desirable feature" of Alberta's #EnergyOnly market.
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So take heart, Albertans! Stop whining about your wildly ballooning energy bills! You're one of the cogs in the great engine and grand experiment that is Alberta Capitalism! It's as close to wealth as you'll ever come!
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One of those fun features of our #EnergyOnly market that literally designs those price spikes you're now paying at historic levels is #EconomicWithholding, which enables utilities to create scarcity & charge you more when you need them most
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-electricity-economic-withholding-1.6946797
#abpoli #EnergyStorage #EnergyGrid #DanielleSmith #DanielleSmithIsUnfitToLead #ClimateChange
Alberta's electricity market can be a complicated subject — what consumers generally understand this year is that prices for electricity have soared and one of the main reasons is something called 'economic withholding.'
TheGentYYC
SilvertipGrizz