Albertans did the right thing Saturday night, unplugging enough that the provincial power grid was able to avoid resorting to a series of rotating power outages on a night when the wind-chill readings across the province threatened to drop to -50 C.
The Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO) worked with the province to issue an emergency alert early Saturday evening, asking everyone to reduce electricity use to essential needs only, to lower the load on the province’s electrical grid, which had been running with a grid alert since 3:30 p.m.
Almost immediately, the AESO says there was a 100 megawatt (MW) drop in demand, which soared to a 200 MW reduction within minutes.
By 8:40 p.m., the alert was ended.
“The province-wide response to the call for energy conservation was tremendous,” said Mike Law, president and CEO of the AESO, in a release. “On behalf of the AESO, I would like to extend my thanks…
