In a recent article in the Calgary Herald, journalist Licia Corbella was effusive in her praise of both solar energy and Alberta’s competitive electricity market. She quoted Robert Hornung, president, and CEO of the Canadian Renewable Energy Association, who also extolled the virtues of solar generation and the competitive market. Energy professionals related to FoSS critiqued this assessment in this new report. The report reveals that renewables investors receive huge hidden subsidies from the province’s consumers. A solar panel produces in December only 29% of its July output, assuming there is no snow on the panel. The cost of battery backup for each home equipped with enough solar panels to produce the annual electricity demand would be $1.3 million, and that would have to be repeated every ten years, which is the expected battery life. The excess electricity output in July is often five or six times greater than the customer’s consumption. The report says “Since it is economically infeasible to buy enough batteries to cover the winter shortfall, it is also infeasible to buy enough to store the summer surplus.  So, the excess solar energy must either flow out to a grid that is larger than today’s or the solar array’s output must be reduced.” Contrary to Corbella’s article, high solar penetration requires a massive buildup to transmission capacity, not less. In the past, investors build power plants to meet consumer’s demand for electricity. Solar projects now are built to displace existing generation, and a large fraction of revenue is from the lack of delivery of an unmeasurable amount of an invisible substance, CO2. It is unknown how much it will cost Albertans in hidden subsidies related to transmission and backup generation costs. Renewable electricity shows up when it wants to while fossil-fuel electricity shows up when we want it to.

See report
https://blog.friendsofscience.org/2021/05/04/electricity-from-the-sun-reality-versus-fantasy/

See articles
https://calgaryherald.com/opinion/columnists/corbella-lots-of-irony-in-alberta-leading-the-country-in-new-solar-projects

https://calgaryherald.com/opinion/columnists/varcoe-transalta-set-to-flip-switch-on-albertas-first-large-scale-battery-storage-project

Friends of Science
https://friendsofscience.org/