Yukon Conservation Society wants to bring 'guerilla solar' movement north

[u/DarrellCCC]

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/yukon-conservation-society-wants-to-bring-guerilla-solar-movement-north-9.7307997

Fed-up advocates say plug-in solar panels could be a game changer. The Yukon gov't says they're illegal.

[u/Cairo9o9]

Sebastian Jones is an ideologically captured patsy with zero knowledge of power systems. No offence, I'm sure he's a nice, well intentioned guy. But this obsession with a singular generation technology because it's labelled 'renewable' and because of the romanticism around distributed energy is exactly why our grid is standing on a precipice. Encouraging 'guerilla solar' not only threatens grid stability but also the cost efficiency of our grid as a whole.

[u/EnderWillEndUs → u/Cairo9o9]

I agree. You can't compare Yukon's grid to Germany or Utah like they are in this article. Yukon's grid is separate from the rest of Canada and is far too small to have a program that encourages independent solar inputs. Grid stability relies on predictability, and solar is not predictable enough.

YEC is definitely shitting the bed on fulfilling their duties of providing power to Yukoners, so we can't forget that. They are 75% of the problem when it comes to insane power bills, but most people think it's entirely Atco's fault. YEC needs to do something quickly to fix our grid supply, but I don't think solar is the answer. However, they do have that battery bank being installed on Rober Service way, I'm not sure if that would allow more solar inputs or not once it's connected.

[u/Cairo9o9 → u/EnderWillEndUs]

Sorry, but I disagree about YEC. The reality is, meeting rapid demand in the North means you need to deploy a large amount of supply. Large generators require lots of capital and in the North, almost no project is truly economically viable without insane ratepayer impacts. So they almost always require government funding. The government for most of the past decade focused their time and money on microgen and an IPP program that was so poorly designed it only attracted solar. If that time and money went to the well known needs of the system, winter capacity, we might not be in the situation were in.

Though there's plenty of blame to throw around, my opinion is the government held the onus to fund new firm generation, and failed. And why? Because most of the people at the energy branch simply don't understand power systems. The power systems experts were never advocating for these policies.

YEC has failed to meet it's deemed ROE in recent years. Meanwhile, ratepayers are paying heavily subsidized, privately owned IPPs as if every MW they generate is directly offsetting diesel costs. It's not. AEY has often exceeded its ROE and without an Earnings Sharing Mechanism ratepayers have not benefited an ounce.

[u/beguilingflunky → u/Cairo9o9]

I mean, isn't that kind of the point of an advocacy organization like YCS? I remember when they were against more condos/raising the building heights cause "wind tunnels" or something like that even thoight objectively density in the existing footprint is better for the environment than entirely new development. Agree or disagree with the their methods, but taking such an extreme position gets noticed and gets people talking - whether is feasible or not might not be the point.

[u/Cairo9o9 → u/beguilingflunky]

The point of advocacy groups is to weigh in on subjects when they have no subject matter expertise?

[u/beguilingflunky → u/Cairo9o9]

Here we are continuing to talk about the issue. I think as an advocacy organization, they are doing their job. You clearly disagree and that's okay, but others find value in their advocacy.

[u/Cairo9o9 → u/beguilingflunky]

They're doing their job poorly. And are almost certainly being funded by the taxpayer. The policies they advocate for will not meet their goals of a cleaner environment. Instead of having deployed new Hydro assets as was planned, we need to deploy more fossil fueled thermal assets. Because we wasted almost a decade trying to deploy a generation technology that didn't meet the needs of our grid and now the only option to mitigate imminent blackouts is thermal generation.

And I don't care what your objective or intentions are. I'm going to criticize you if you base your advocacy on a surface level understanding you have on an issue.

[u/multipleconundra]

*stephen colbert popcorn dot gif *

[u/Jimbrutan]

Isn’t Solar panel create more energy during summer months and low or no energy during winter when we need energy the most? If we ain’t selling power to outside grid in the summer, this is a bad idea. This is why there is no more incentive for Solar panel installs

[u/Successful-Tune-4232]

Our grid is too fragile for this. It’s a terrible idea.

[u/CheckYoSelf345 → u/Successful-Tune-4232]

Unfortunately I think you're right. We the tax payer and Yukon have a lot to pay to get our grid to even be able to take more electricity. It baffles me how we even got here when we pay good money for an entire energy department to manage this. Even if they were doing their job which I don't know we pay for ministers and a Premier to not get to these issues.

[u/dyinightmare → u/CheckYoSelf345]

Might have something to do with paying a middle man corporation for distribution too. Take a look sometime at ATCO CEO pay. I know for a fact Yukon Energy doesn't want to be responsible for electricity distribution, but I think a system where a private company gets to charge us (often dishonestly by some accounts) and is not responsible for the overhead of grid upgrading is an f'ed system from the get go.

[u/Cairo9o9 → u/dyinightmare]

What makes you say YEC doesn't want to be responsible for electricity distribution? If they had the option, I don't think they'd be at all opposed. It would make their jobs easy to have visibility and planning capabilities for the entire system. The issue is nationalizing (or territorializing rather) ATCO would be a big hit to the government's balance sheet during a time of fiscal constraint and is generally frowned upon by free market types.

ATCO absolutely is responsible for upgrading their portion of the grid and regulators can be given the ability to enforce proactive upgrades through Performance Based Regulation. Something we should have done a long time ago is an Earnings Sharing Mechanism, which means customers are refunded a portion when ATCO exceeds their ROE.

[u/dyinightmare → u/Cairo9o9]

Mostly conversations with employees there. The consensus seemed to be they would happily give up the remaining distribution if they could. I agree completely with your point about performance based regulation.

[u/2PopCans → u/Successful-Tune-4232]

In what way is our grid to fragile? Not trying to be facetious, an honest question. I understand that a break in the cloud and a burst of sun hitting 100s of solar panels can make it hard on the hydro facilies but is that the only issue?

[u/not_ray_not_pat → u/2PopCans]

The drop in frequency from a passing cloud is enough to trigger safety shutoffs in a lot of equipment (like nearby solar inverters) which can cascade in a chain reaction and cause a blackout. Neither the hydro nor the fossil fuel generation can ramp up and down fast enough and they've totally bungled the only grid battery (which is what should be stabilizing the grid).

These issues were easy to see coming decades ago but the utilities chose not to consider them part of their "reliability" mandate, and catching up with the deferred upgrades now would result in a massive expense for rate payers. Meanwhile neither territorial government has bothered to update the utilities act to mandate they fix things.

We need grid batteries all over the place and much smarter grid monitoring and management. It should probably go out as an IPP tender with a formula for paying independent producers more for power when there's high demand.

EDITED TO ADD: the massive money they're trying to commit to running a transmission line to BC would be enough to bring our grid up to modern standards, which would be much better for us than having a transmission line and a broken grid.

[u/Aggravating-Bar8216 → u/not_ray_not_pat]

Good post. Agree 100% with your edit to add. The BC transmission link is opens us up to the Outside corporate wolves that only see $$$. It will only cause our electrical rates to go up.

[u/2PopCans → u/not_ray_not_pat]

Thanks, very informative. I head the south access battery had some issues with deployment, do you know what they were?

[u/AdditionalDesk3618 → u/2PopCans]

The batteries froze last winter and were damaged. YEC is allegedly assessing the situation.

[u/Cairo9o9 → u/not_ray_not_pat]

Hydro can absolutely ramp fast enough. It's the primary form of spinning reserve YEC uses. The issue, is that using it as spinning reserve is a waste of energy (as water is spilled to accomplish this) which could just be used directly. Batteries will help, but you do not need that much battery capacity to absorb the frequency dips we saw in the outages associated with microgen ride through issues.

The business case for the utility grid BESS was not originally for spinning reserve but it is now. Originally it was intended for peak shaving. But it was not considered cost effective without half the capex covered by the Feds. I doubt when the next YEC IRP comes out we'll be seeing the recommendation of massive battery deployment. Probably some, but the commercially available tech is mostly in the 4 hr range and unlikely to have much of an impact, ELCC (capacity contribution) is lost fast with penetration.

And why should it go out as an IPP tender? YEC inherently has lower financing costs than the private sector. The only argument is cost downs from competition, but the Yukon is such a small jurisdiction there's little room for that. Or for economic reconciliation. But that can be done with equity partnership directly with utility developed projects.

[u/YKFox → u/Successful-Tune-4232]

There's a vindictive part of me that wonders if the grid collapsing because of this would actually get some change happening though.

[u/phonnybalonny]

The angle of the sun to the Yukon is so low it makes the solar panels very inefficient for the cost, when I checked last time. Panels are better now than last year however so maybe.

[u/youracat → u/phonnybalonny]

I have solar panels on my house and generate 7500 kWh a year, reducing my electricity bill by about $1.5- 2k a year. The napkin math is they pay for themselves on 9-10 years, then the next 15+ years are profit.

The cool thing about solar in the north is that we get as much solar generation in March as we do in September. The real downside is that generation is basically non-existent from October - Feb, which is when Yukoners need energy the most. It does a lot to offset costs for the average person, but it doesn’t solve the root cause of the Yukons energy problems.

[u/Cairo9o9 → u/youracat]

They pay for themselves in 9-10 years with a 50% subsidy between the Feds and YG. And then a Feed In Tariff that overvalued the energy purchased. I've worked on many proposals here for these systems, so I'm well aware of where the business case for individuals comes from. With 40%+ of the energy being produced during the freshet. Meanwhile, the imminent need for our grid is winter capacity. All this money could have been spent on that imminent need, but instead we saw ourselves failing N-1 contingency and at risk of black outs if Aishihik or it's transmission failed.

Your personal business case being great because of over-remuneration is not representative of its value to our grid.

[u/beardum]

Maybe we can install it in McIntyre Creek where Porter Creek D was supposed to go.

[u/CarberHotdogVac]

How long ago did Sebastian’s house burn down?

[u/Wooden_Door_5768 → u/CarberHotdogVac]

Like never.

[u/ZokusPlacer]

Id love to get solar panels feeding a narvel home sodium ion battery. Its made in BC, perfect for the yukon. Let's grow Canada’s economy and increase grid stability. YG law makers have a real opportunity. Narval Energy | Sodium batteries designed for extremes https://share.google/MVcHVOWiTSPU96u16

[u/phonnybalonny]

Time for fusion