Keephills#1 went offline at 22:29 and HR Milner went offline at 23:56. Expect AESO prices to be much higher today – in addition to losing these two units, the troublesome AESO Merit Order also has some huge changes today with only 70MW offered between $200 and $900(441MW yesterday) and 1684MW offered at $900 or higher(1179MW yesterday). Demand hit 10,609 megawatts at 6 p.m. yesterday breaking the record of 10,315 MW set one day earlier. AESO’s short term outage chart suggests we should get Keephills back tomorrow. There was 2.7bcf of natural gas was removed from storage yesterday.
ATCO and AltaLink have already spent about $200 million – money consumers could ultimately be on the hook for – on two proposed Edmonton-Calgary transmission lines that are now under review, according to Alberta Energy. The ministry has requested the two builders and operators of the respective lines to stop spending on the $3 billion project until a Critical Trans-mission Review Committee appointed by the premier reports Feb. 10. The companies are authorized to spend money to prepare for the construction of the lines, but the ministry has asked them to refrain from making unnecessary expenditures until a final decision is made. IPCAA executive director Sheldon Fulton filed a letter with the Alberta Utilities Commission at the end of November urging it to step in after the companies filed documents with the Transmission Facilities Cost Monitoring Committee showing they had already committed to spending more than $932 million. Fulton and other stake-holders complain the costs are not known until after they have been incurred and then there is a hearing after the fact to determine if they are justifiable and whether consumers should pay for the full amount.
