SaskPower's 2021-22 Annual Report: More Wind, More Coal, Higher Costs, Less Income... Rate Increases

SaskPower released their 2021-22 Annual Report last week. A lot can change in a year! 

Let's explore the data and the new information. All numbers in this post are from the five-year operating and finance statistics (last few pages of the report), and all page numbers reference the 2021-22 report unless otherwise noted. 

Electricity costs to consumers are increasing by 8% over the next year. 

On p9 of the 2021-22 report we learn we're in for two rate increases in the next ~10 months. A 4% increase this September and a 4% increase in April, pending approval by the Saskatchewan Rate Review Panel (SRRP). The decision should be confirmed (or not) this July. 

This is SaskPower's first rate increase since March 2018, so there's a fair argument to be made that we're overdue to pay more. 

But what are the costs driving this rate increase? Read on...

Provincial generating capacity has increased, mostly in wind. 

Golden South, Blue Hill, and Riverhurst Wind Energy Facilities have come online, delivering a combined 385 MW of generation capacity - when the wind is blowing, of course. 

Generating capacity includes SaskPower assets plus Independent Power Producers (IPPs) SaskPower buys power from. 

Due to the ramp-down of Unit #4 at Boundary Dam Power Station this year, 141 MW of dispatchable base-load electricity has been taken offline (p30). 

The result, which you can infer from the chart above, is we have less dispatchable, reliable base-load generating capacity than in the last two years. 

Generating capacity is somewhat misleading when it includes non-dispatchable sources that cannot be called online when needed. 

Generating capacity is growing faster than electricity supplied.

Intuitively, and as SaskPower makes clear in the report, this is due to intermittent renewables. Intalling intermittent sources means we build more dispatchable assets to ensure there is always capacity to meet peak demand (plus an operating reserve).

When the sun shines and the wind blows, we draw on renewable sources and ramp down dispatchable sources. When it's dark and still, we burn gas and coal. 

Question: In a province facing so many parallel challenges (healthcare and education to pick two), is the best use of scarce resources to build out intermittent generation capacity? Or would it be better to install dispatchable, on-demand base load? 

Hydro power was down significantly in 2021-22 due to drought conditions. 

The result was that SaskPower burned more gas, more coal, and imported more power from other jurisdictions to make up the gap. 

One takeaway from this graph is how one bad year can completely reverse a 3-year trend of declining fossil fuel use. Things can change in a positive direction, but quickly reverse when times are dire. 

Look at Germany, bringing coal generation back online in their current energy crisis. Will Saskatchewan even flinch thinking about keeping coal burning past 2030 if we don't have reliable replacement generation in place? 

In 2021-22, SaskPower ran their remaining coal assets harder than they've been run in years. 

When hydro availability dropped this past year, SaskPower ramped up their coal assets and ran them harder than they've been run in years. Peak-adjusted utilization (based on GWh delivered, MW capacity, and annual peak load) was over 100%, which means:

• Assets were run above capacity, and/or 
• Decommissioned coal assets were temporarily brought back online, and/or
• My utilization metric (methodology on my previous post) isn't perfect, because of limited data supplied by the provincial utility

Some call-outs when reading this graph: 

1. We might be able to ignore solar's abysmal 3.4% utilization in 2021-22, on the basis of it being the first year with any data. In my last post, the City of Saskatoon hinted at utilization of solar PV at ~26% (in reality, would be lower - search "solar capacity factor"). Utilization at one tenth of that is awful. 
   
   
2. Does adding new wind capacity in 2021-22 also skew the reporting? Despite increasing wind generation capacity by 260% year-over-year, SaskPower reports electricity supplied by wind increased by just 180%. The 40% utilization this past year is within historical error bars, and could be due to curtailment, production being out of phase with demand, or just a calmer year.
   
   
3. We have to demand better, more granular data from SaskPower so we don't have to have all these call-outs. (write your MLA, let's get more transparent data!)

SaskPower's Net Income fell through the floor. 

SaskPower's Net Income this past reporting year was just $11 million dollars, down from $160M last year. 

These "modest earnings" were "anticipated" (p9) due to "defer[ring] increasing customer electricity rates in the face of rising cost pressure due to capital spending and higher fuel and purchased power expense." 

Questions: 

• Is the "rising cost pressure due to capital spending" due to the "major built-out of intermittent renewable energy," (p15) which are material-dense and energy-dilute? In other words, is the graph above a spurious correlation, or an indication we're accelerating spending capital on projects with poor economic value? 
  
  
• Does "higher fuel purchased power expense" include the costs of renewables? Or, are private Independent Power Providers?
  
  SaskPower deleted a table that was on p4 of the 2020-21 report that broke out PPA (Power Purchase Agreement) capacity vs. SaskPower-owned capacity. The impact is we cannot calculate IPP-delivered energy vs. SaskPower-delivered energy (although, here is a fun fact: over 98% of wind assets in SK are IPP-owned) and related costs. 
  
  However, we can look at costs aggregated by fuel source: read on. 

We have decent data on fuel and purchased power costs by source. We're missing capital and operating costs.

Using data on p80 of the 2021-22 report (and a similar table from the previous years' report), we can visualize the cost category "Fuel and Purchased Power". SaskPower says these costs include:

the fuel charges associated with the electricity generated from SaskPower-owned facilities, costs associated with power purchase agreements (PPAs), as well as electricity imported from markets outside Saskatchewan. This electricity is used to serve our company’s Saskatchewan customers, with surplus electricity being sold to markets outside the province when favourable conditions exist (p34)

Looking at the last two years, we can visualize the significant increase we spend in this category, and it's not all carbon tax: 

Gas is up, coal is up, wind is up (although its footprint doubled year-over-year), and imports are up. 

The above chart shows total fuel and purchased costs per year in millions of dollars. 

When the costs are normalized to the total amount of electricity generated by each source, a different story is told: 

(image updated 2022-08-12 - I noticed an embarrassing error in units conversion. Original image showed all costs 1000x too high)

Just for fun, here's the same dataset inverted to visualize how the amount of electricity we can generate for every million dollars of fuel and purchased power spend. 

The takeaway is it's terrifically expensive per unit of energy to purchase imported energy, buy from small IPPs, and buy from solar providers. 

(not that we shouldn't do any of these things. An example: the City of Saskatoon's landfill gas plant is a small IPP that valuably combusts waste gasses that are worse for the atmosphere than CO2, and is trending towards breaking even on its electricity sold back to the City) 

Caveats to this analysis:

1. Fuel and Purchased Power does not factor in Operating, Maintenance, and Administration costs (which are another $700M, and are not broken out by generating source or plant). Where can we get this data? 
   
   
2. Fuel and Purchased Power does not include any capital expended by SaskPower to build generating assets. Where can we get this data? 
   
   
3. Numbers may be misleading for just 12 MW of solar capacity in the province in 2021-22. We will have to monitor this closely. 

I would love better data on capital and operating costs to understand what it costs to build, operate, and generate reliable electricity in this province. 

The question for the future is: What will Saskatchewan replace our cheap, dispatchable, stable, dirty, bad, base-load coal with? What happens to total fuel costs (and costs per kWh) when coal is off the table? If the solution is "more wind," what dispatchable source do we build up in parallel? How much more cheap hydro do we have access to? Do wind and gas costs rise or fall when they're more coupled  and interdependent in the future? 

What does the future hold for Saskatchewan and what does it mean for our utility bills - and the climate? 

Here are some more tidbits from the 2021-22 report and questions I'd like to learn more about: 

• More gas incoming: Great Plains (Gas) Power Station will deliver 377 MW of generation capacity in 2024 (p45)
  
  
• A 100 MW solar facility is planned for the Estevan area (p14 - no date given), built for SaskPower by a private sector partner. Three more 10 MW installations are planned (by IPPs) between 2022 and 2024 (p45)
  
  
• Another 200 MW of wind is coming online in 2024: Bekevar Wind Energy Facility. 
  
  
• 190 MW of additional hydro capacity from Manitoba should be online by 2024 (p45)
  
  
• The Audit & Finance Committee notes mention SaskPower's "10-year generation supply plan" (p106). Where is this plan? Should it be publicly available? I've emailed SaskPower to ask for a copy. 
  
  
• What are the dependencies and relationships between SaskEnergy and SaskPower? Topical this week was a proposed 17% customer rate hike over the next year and a bit. I have started reading and hope to have a post up in the next month. 
  
  
• SaskPower is assessing the feasibility of a 300 MW Small Modular Reactor (SMR) for commissioning "as early as" 2034. 
• Why not earlier? 
• Why only 300 MW when there's 1200 MW of coal to be retired by 2030? 
  

I have another post in the works where I will start exploring possible answers to the question of what happens when coal goes away in this province. 

I'll give you a hint: think of an energy source that generates a zero-carbon, stable base load with a fuel can be stockpiled on a small generation site for years in advance. 

As always: open to constructive feedback and corrections! 
Data and calculations.

2022-08-12: Updated the 7th image in this post correcting a units conversion error. 

Feedback Opportunity: City of Saskatoon's Renewable Energy Strategy Survey

Reducing carbon emissions in Saskatoon or lowering utility costs: can we have both? Read on... 

The Survey

The City of Saskatoon is consulting with citizens on its Renewable Energy Strategy which will be presented to City Council in 2022. I received an email to provide input via a survey. Let's do some homework, then come back to the survey. 

The Renewable Energy Strategy is anchored by Saskatoon's Low Emissions Community Plan (PDF), published in 2018. Let's highlight a few stated objectives and benefits from the Plan. 

Lots of jobs and reduced expenses for residents: 

(p6, Executive Summary. Click for big) 

And lower utility bills for residents and businesses: 

(p20, Benefits of a Low Emissions Community. Click for big)

Jobs and lower costs for residents? That's great! Right? 

When you click on the recent survey link (which is available until July 12, 2022 on the Renewable Energy Strategy Engage page) the first question is "what is your level of support for the following city-led initiatives?"

(from "Follow-up On What We Heard - Renewable Energy Strategy" survey, June 27 to July 12. Click for big)

Lots of these initiatives seem like positives. Saskatoon's landfill gas capture power generation system has been marketed to citizens as a big green-energy win, with a 9-year payback (source, see FAQ section). Solar is good (right?). 

However, Question Three on the survey is essentially, "how do you want to pay for this?"

(from "Follow-up On What We Heard - Renewable Energy Strategy" survey, June 27 to July 12. Click for big)

The options are we "may need to" do one (or more) of the following: 

• Increasing property taxes
• Increasing utility rates
• Borrowing through low-interest loans [BN: how are these paid back? My guess is property taxes and/or utility rates] 
• None of the above

Conclusion: The City is dropping some strong hints that this group of renewable energy projects will fail to reduce utility rates.  

The question to explore: 

Why might (some of) these City-led renewable energy initiatives fail to meet (some of) the objectives of the Low Emissions Community Plan, resulting in increased property taxes and utility rates for citizens?

Let's hypothesize and/or investigate why these initiatives would increase costs, one initiative at a time. 

• Landfill Gas Capture. Until this afternoon, I thought this project was a green-energy win with its 9-year payback. Then I found this memo suggesting the 9 years (from 2014) payback is now 30+ year payback due to lower-than-predicted gas volumes, maintenance costs and expensive contractors, unreliable equipment, and operational challenges (see also: this PDF slide deck showing maintenance challenges like condensate lines frozen shut in winter). 
  
  
• Combined Heat & Power. Skip: I haven't read anything on this. 
  
  
• Utility-scale solar pilot. What I like: "Utility scale" - the companion doc from the survey says the plant is 2.2 MW. What I don't like: Solar, specifically PV (photovoltaic) solar (in contrast to concentrating solar, which are just big mirrors). Why would this increase utility rate and taxes? 
  
  
• Solar is low energy density. This City PowerPoint PDF says 14 acres of land will be used. This page on Our World In Data helps illustrate how many meters-squared of land is used by different energy sources. If Saskatoon continues to build out utility-scale solar in City limits, we use up valuable land that could have been put other productive or social-good uses. We will spend more time and materials maintaining a relatively large footprint with a relatively low impact. 
  
  
• Solar is intermittent. Solar needs to be backed up by dispatchable energy (e.g. gas, coal, hydro).  The Background tab on the Engage page says Saskatoon is "ideal" for solar with 2,260 hours of bright sunlight per year. I interpret this as the effective utilization of a solar panel is ~26%. While the project documents talk about an 11-year payback and "cost neutral to ratepayers" (PowerPoint linked above), I hypothesize the City has not accounted for rising rates from SaskPower over the next decade(s) as the utility struggles to integrate renewables into their grid (book rec), and manage rising costs of natural gas and carbon (see my last post). If Saskatoon wants to pay for solar, they also have to want to pay for dispatchable energy to be on standby.
  
  
• The life of the plant is 30 years. I have not seen (but have not looked for) a decommissioning and/or recycling plan for these panels which are full of heavy metals and circuitry fused into glass and silicon. Is it illogical to think that in the future we will impose thorough (and expensive) requirements for decommissioning and recycling solar PV panels? 
  
  
• Rooftop solar on City buildings. All of the points about the utility-scale solar above, multiplied by project management, engineering, planning, permitting, and installation costs for dozens of city buildings instead of one large utility-scale site. Capital cost per MW of generation capacity skyrockets. Operating and maintenance costs per installed panel go up (think: electrician travel time and per-building delays). That hits your utility bill. 
  
  
• Solar at the Wastewater Treatment Plant. I've covered solar enough. 
  
  
• Biogas use at the Wastewater Treatment Plant. This is the one item on the list I'm cautiously optimistic for. Biogas, like the Landfill gas project, should be a dispatchable (steady) source, or at least less intermittent than solar. The plan (see companion doc) is to use biogas for heating at the WWTP, which would offset natural gas usage. It may also be used for electricity generation. 
  
  
• Purchase renewable energy credits through SaskPower. It should be obvious why this would increase utility rates and/or property taxes. This is a straightforward payment of cash to the provincial utility with nothing tangible returned to the City.
  
  
• Renewable energy storage. Pro: Adding a battery and limiting it to only storing renewably-generated energy would increase the effective utilization of renewable energy sources like solar and landfill gas. Con: Limiting the battery to charging on renewable energy may constrain useful functionality, e.g. charging the battery from grid/gas when it's dead may help mitigate local grid blips or brownouts. I suspect a high cost per MW/MWh at the scale the City might investigate. SaskPower is already investigating this at "grid scale" (see my last post) - maybe we should wait and see the results. 

Is this guy against renewables? Get him!

I am not opposed to renewable energy. I am a huge and growing fan of zero-carbon energy and decarbonization in general. Renewable energy has a role to play in our energy systems. 

But...

I am generally opposed to (but open to exploring) small-scale renewable energy projects. As David C. MacKay writes in Sustainable Energy - Without The Hot Air, "every BIG helps!" Let's maximize the value of the time, energy, money, and raw materials by looking for big changes with big impacts. 

I am mildly opposed to, perhaps hesitant is a better word, the idea of municipalities executing their own strategies for sourcing and generating energy. The Grid by Gretchen Bakke had a powerful idea which I'll paraphrase: grids are best run on a socialism model. They should be owned by the people and serve the widest public good, which should be delivering reliable, low-cost energy. Since energy sources added to any part of our provincial grid impact every other part of it (and every ratepayer), the more centrally and systematically our grid is managed, the better. Like healthcare. (compare and contrast to dysfunctional grids and health care systems in the USA running on free-market models - also covered in Bakke's book). The people of Saskatchewan should be having this conversation at the provincial level. 

I am strongly opposed to deploying intermittent renewables like solar PV under the guise that they will lower utility rates and/or property taxes to ratepayers. I am not convinced this is doable (I've seen too many cost/benefit analyses with a positive benefit dragged 20 years into the future in Excel, missing risks, operations & maintenance costs, etc., to trust projections). Again: if we want to pay for solar (or wind, etc.) we have to also want to pay for dispatchable energy, or expensive energy storage like batteries, to be on standby. Paying to maintain and operate two parallel and redundant sets of infrastructure means costs go up. 

The point is: we have to have a conversation about if we care MORE about reducing emissions (undoubtedly good) than we care about the costs of building and operating intermittent renewables and/or small energy projects that don't benefit from size/scale, and increase our utility bills, and increase energy poverty. What is the best environment/energy value per time or dollar spent for citizens of Saskatoon? Is municipal the right jurisdiction to build energy projects? What and where should our focus be, municipally and/or provincially? 

I don't want to say we shouldn't also make small changes, innovate, and get experience with new technologies. But we should be really, really sure they are changes in the right direction. If the LECP was trying to deliver lower costs and reduced energy poverty, this recent engagement survey signals we are not moving in the right direction. 

Last idea for now. Take a look at Page 12 of the Low Emissions Community Plan. The two most impactful initiatives Saskatoon can undertake to reduce carbon emissions, which are an order of magnitude higher impact than everything else on the list, are procuring renewable energy and renewable gas from third-party producers. Every other initiative is peanuts in comparison. 

Call To Action

1. Check out these resources:
• Renewable Energy Strategy Engage Page 
• Low Emissions Community Plan (120 pages) from 2018. 
• Renewable Energy Strategy Engagement Summary (35 pages) published June 27, 2022
2. Review the Updates and Other Considerations (6 pages) document to prepare for the survey
3. Complete the survey linked on the Engage Page before July 12, 2022. 

Fill out the survey however you want, but if you're supportive of the renewable energy projects in Question 1, I hope you signal your support for paying for them in Question 3. 

Closing Note

I've cited sources, provided links, and used words like "hypothesize" to indicate uncertainty where I've done less homework and reading. I'm committed to learning more about decarbonization so leave me a comment (moderated/delayed due to platform spam) or a tweet with constructive feedback or corrections. 

2022-07-08: Minor updates for clarity.

Questions and learnings from reading SaskPower's annual report (2020-21)

Over the last few years I have become more fascinated by energy and energy issues. I've read a bunch of books (here's my list and queue on the topic of energy), tuned into some great podcasts like Decouple, and even made a career change to be closer to the energy sector. 

I have not seen a terrific amount of dialogue about energy in Saskatchewan. That may due to channels I'm plugging into (or not). To learn more, I read SaskPower's 2020-21 Annual Report. These are some of the things I learned and some questions I think are worth asking. Any page numbers I mention refer to the 2020-21 report PDF.

(update 2022-07-13: See my updated post on the 2021-22 report)

0. Background terms

Two related but critically different units in energy are the watt and the watt-hour. Watts (W, kW, GW) represent a rate, whereas watt-hours (more commonly kilowatt-hours; Wh, kWh, GWh) represent a quantity. 

Little example: if you have a 60 watt light bulb turned on for one hour, the light consumes at a constant rate of 60 watts, for a total energy consumption of 0.06 kWh. 

Big example: SaskPower's peak load was 3,722 MW (instantaneous production/consumption), their total generating capacity is 4,987 MW, and they supplied 24,634 GWh of energy in 2020-21. 

1. Did you know we're not a coal province, we're a gas province? (but we still burn coal) 

There's a trope in Saskatchewan when talking about electrification (of cars, appliances, heating, etc.) that when you electrify something, it's "coal-powered." Nice EV you've got there, did you know it runs on coal? 

I was surprised to learn that 43% of the province's generating capacity is natural gas, compared to 31% coal (page 6). By 2025, this is forecasted to be 40% gas, 21% coal, with wind making up much of the difference. 

2. Given SaskPower is going big on wind power, why aren't they clear about wind utilization?

On page 2, two new wind projects (Golden South Wind Energy Facility and Blue Hill Wind Energy Facility) are discussed, adding a combined 375 MW of generating capacity to the province's grid this year. This will more than double previous wind generation in the province. By 2025, they estimate 15% of the province's generating capacity will be wind (approx. 900 MW). 

(Just for a sense of scale, the Queen Elizabeth (gas) Power Station in Saskatoon is listed at 623 MW)

The utility is not clear about the utilization or capacity factor of wind assets. On p117 there are tables that let us calculate a rough estimate of utilization. See this spreadsheet for my futzing around. 

In the first two columns are data from p117. Columns F and G calculate the theoretical energy (GWh) that each source could generate if it were running at 100% utilization, 24/7/365, which are scaled by multiplying by peak load (3,722 MW) over total generating capacity (4,987 MW). This scaling is done because we can't run at 100% utilization all the time; electricity supply must always equal demand. 

Let's visualize the top four power sources in chart form: 

Conclusions and speculations from this chart (recall, this is 2020-21 data): 

• Coal is the province's stable base load, running at the highest overall utilization (even though more generation capacity and electricity supplied is from gas)
• Wind is the least utilized source relative to its generating capacity (perhaps predictable, due to its intermittency) 
• Hydro is lower than I expected but perhaps like gas, it is more easily dialed up and down to handle variability in demand (customers) and supply (intermittent renewables). There are also seasonal considerations in managing water levels of dams

Why does utilization matter, both for the climate and our energy bills? 

One of SaskPower's corporate metrics (M17, see p30) is Renewable Generation Portfolio (%), or how much power generation capacity comes from wind (and solar, hydro, biomass, waste heat, flare gas, landfill gas). However, what's more important than capacity is utilization! The numerator (actual electricity supplied) is more important than the denominator (theoretical capacity if the wind never stops blowing) for keeping our fridges running.

My peak-adjusted utilization numbers aren't perfect but are useful for asking questions like this. SaskPower should publish utilization data, and even better, supply live demand and capacity data like the province of Alberta. 

Clarity around capacity factors and utilization for renewable sources are important. If 15% of our generation capacity by 2025 comes from wind, what does that translate to in electricity supplied? Weighing costs, intermittency, and climate goals, is it worth it? 

3. The province is phasing out coal by 2030. Is natural gas enough to carry this province? 

"Renewable power holds a central place on the roadmap to our province’s cleaner energy future. In the years ahead, wind and solar generation will play increasingly larger roles as generating options. As we phase out conventional coal-fired facilities in Saskatchewan by 2030, SaskPower will rely on natural gas generation to back up intermittent renewable generation until other emissions-free baseload power options are proven reliable, cost effective and available for our geographic region." (p11, emphasis mine) 

I didn't realize coal was being phased out. This is exciting from an environment standpoint. 

It is maybe slightly concerning from an energy security standpoint. Natural gas is dispatchable in the sense that power generation can be ramped up and down quickly to meet supply, but it's dependent on gas being in the pipe and flowing to the plant. Three of coal's redeeming factors: One, a great big pile of it can be stored on-site to buffer supply and demand, two, it's low-cost (in dollars, not climate impacts), and three, we have a lot of it in the ground in Saskatchewan. 

I did a bit more reading and learned that SK is Canada's third-largest natural gas supplier (source) and there are underground caverns all over SK and AB where gas is stored to buffer supply/demand (source). So maybe shutting down coal is not a big deal in the grand scheme of things. 

Once coal ramps down, we're dependent on the flow (and cost) of gas for energy security, plus the 20% of generating capacity that comes from hydro.

The longer-term nuclear and geothermal options for the province are very appealing from an energy security standpoint, where fuel is either stockpile-able for years or functionally infinite. 

4. Is it widely understood that renewables need to be backed up with gas? The utility is quite blunt about this.

Increasing use of intermittent renewables (like wind and solar) must be combined with increasing use of more dispatchable energy sources like gas or coal. Hydro is dispatchable - until the dam is empty. But it makes sense: when the sun stops shining and the wind stops blowing, we still want our phones charging. 

SaskPower states this in an unmissable spot on page 3: 

"As we continue to integrate increasing levels of renewable energy, natural-gas fired generation will play a foundational role in following intermittent supplies of wind and solar energy." 

It is discussed much more throughout the report.

SaskPower discusses another option to back up renewables: the utility is building their first "grid-scale" battery. It will be 20 MW (about 0.4% of grid generating capacity) and be able to "power up to 20,000 homes for one hour." This is framed as a learning project for larger future options. I am skeptical but curious to see if battery storage technology can achieve "true" grid scale at a reasonable cost. It's good we're starting small. 

5. What does it cost to generate electricity in SK (operating costs and capital)?

I would love to see data or tables that make the following types of questions super easy to answer: 

• What is the operating cost per kWh to supply energy, broken out by generation type and individual plant? 
• What is the capital cost per MW of new capacity, also broken out by generation type and individual plant/project? 

I couldn't find this anywhere in the report. 

Without cost data it is difficult to ask questions and have discussions about the value of current and future projects. It is easy to compare wind to natural gas on an emissions basis, but what about capital cost, or operating cost?  Are the people in the province getting the most bang (literally, electricity) for their buck? Emissions is part of that conversation, but costs need to be understood. 

6. SaskPower is not the sole electricity generator in the province. How does public/private grid management impact ratepayers?

This is obvious to people who know about SaskPower's Net Metering program, where individual customers can sell their own power back to the grid (I did learn this applies to any power type like biomass or wind, too). 

I was surprised to learn (see page 4 of the report) is that 18% of SaskPower's generating capacity comes from Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) with independent power producers (IPPs). Here, SaskPower is buying power from in-province private entities, or cross-border public entities like Manitoba Hydro. 

The majority of that 18% PPA-supplied capacity is natural gas, and there is over $10B committed to long-term (greater than 5 year) PPA contracts. 

I can think of lots of interesting questions around PPAs:

• Is SaskPower required to act as a monopsony, obligated to buy any power hitting the SK grid? Or can they say "no" to proposed projects and/or disable IPPs from feeding electricity into the grid, when needed?
• When both public-owned (SaskPower) and private (IPP) electricity is available, which source gets priority in hitting the grid? How is that balanced? 
• How are private- and publicly-owned sources balanced to ensure high standby costs are not passed on to ratepayers? The negative image that jumps into my mind is an IPP plant running at 100% with the SaskPower plant next door idling, with all the workers sitting around having coffee. 
• Are PPAs an emerging or growing trend, or part of a stable and healthy energy infrastructure? I can imagine some people being quite shocked at nearly 20% non-publicly owned capacity, and others pushing for more private energy generation opportunities. 
• If the bulk of IPPs are wind and solar (see p119 map), are purchase agreements structured to account for the fact that SaskPower is always the reactive party? (essentially, SaskPower needs to dial gas/coal/hydro up or down to react to renewables) Do SaskPower's costs increase as more private intermittent power is added to the grid, and is this accounted for in PPAs? How is the utility planning for more IPPs/PPAs in the future from more variable sources? Is grid management... easy right now, or hard?

The over-arching question is what is the impact IPPs have on grid management, grid planning, and energy cost to ratepayers? 

7. What are SaskPower's top corporate risks? Most interesting risks? 

From p53 in the report, there's a detailed discussion of some of the top 10 risks facing the utility. Here are some of the more interesting ones and a few thoughts. 

#1: Environmental regulation. Changing regulations have forced the shutdown of coal by 2030. We know that Saskatchewan pays for the carbon in our natural gas, and that cost of carbon is ramping up from ~$40/tonne (today) to ~$170/tonne (in 2030, and what impact will that have on our electricity rates?). What's hinted at in this risk management section is that if environmental regulations and the cost of carbon are a constantly-shifting target, that impacts the utility's ability to plan for costs in the future, which will certainly impact ratepayers.

#2: Financial sustainability "is challenged by current economic conditions, growing capital requirements, increasing debt, and pressures to maintain competitive rates." Isn't it just a bit concerning when your provincial utility worries about their long-term financial health? What's the impact on the people in the province? 

#8: Industry disruption. Essentially, SaskPower's infrastructure is mostly in its twilight years, environmental regulations constrain how and when new supply is brought on, new types of loads like EVs are expected to change grid demand, and customer self-generation is growing. I highly recommend The Grid by Gretchen Bakke to learn more about challenges facing grid operators.

#10: Security and optimization of energy supply. p56: "Increasing the percentage of renewables in the supply mix - along with changing regulations resulting in the phase-out of conventional coal-fired generation - impacts system operability and has the potential to increase costs to integrate and maintain a secure system. The natural gas market continues to evolve [...] impacting supply and demand." Here again, SaskPower is hinting at a renewables-and-gas-rich, but more expensive and harder-to-operate grid of the future. 

8. Is nuclear renewable? Is anything? 

The nuclear part of this question was not answered in the 2020-21 report, and would make for an interesting debate. As I mentioned above, SaskPower has a corporate metric (#M17) for the percentage of generating capacity that comes from renewable sources. The metric explicitly includes wind, solar, and hydro, excludes fossil sources, and doesn't mention nuclear. 

The first flaw in this metric (discussed briefly in Section 2) is that it's not clear how or if capacity factor and utilization play into that metric. An absurd exploit would be building 100 MW of solar panels... deep underground where they get no sunlight. Does the fact they're grid-connected mean they count towards capacity? 

The second flaw is that "renewable" is not well-defined, in this M17 metric or in society in general. When you look at the mass of raw, scarce materials required to generate 1 MWh of electricity, wind and solar don't look so hot - see p66 of this monster PDF report from the UN (note the page is numbered 56, but is 66 of the PDF). It takes 300-600 grams of scarce minerals to generate 1 MWh of solar PV electricity, but just 59 grams of minerals per 1 MWh of natural gas. Nuclear: 84 grams per 1 MWh. 

I am not against wind or solar energy but I think the renewables discussion should go deeper than the  emissions and ecological impacts in one's own community. It takes concrete, glass, polymers, and a ton of mining and processing to build all of that "clean" energy infrastructure. 

The point is that if we care about decarbonization, a "renewable" metric that excludes nuclear may work against us in how we allocate capital and plan for major future energy sources. 

Fin

As I was reading, I was signing up to various SaskPower newsletters to get updates about changes in the future. My sense is the provincial energy mix is not a widely discussed or debated topic and I was hoping to start some of that - then again, maybe I'm plugged into the wrong channels and these questions are all asked and answered. Please let me know of any errors or inaccuracies above. 

What I've love to see in the future is more transparency from the provincial utility on current supply and demand (ideally, some live value that can be scraped or trended), broken down by energy type and source facility, like Alberta has. I would also like to see more discussion around costs by facility or aggregated by generation type.

I expect SaskPower to release their 2021-22 report shortly. I will make a follow-up post to see if anything has substantially changed. Thanks for reading. 

2022-07-08: Revised content for clarity. 

AI/Machine Vision Water Meter Reader on a $12 CAD chip (plus Home Assistant integration)

In 2016 I bought and set up the emonPI Raspberry PI-based home energy monitor, which lets me trend and track energy consumption at home. 

Since then I've wanted to track water and gas usage, but until now I could not find any good solutions (within my abilities). We have an Elster C700 water meter but I was wary of tapping into the built-in digital encoder due to a tamper mechanism (this sentence also overstates my ability and ambition... I like solutions that someone else has pioneered first). 

This post is about deploying jomjol's AI-on-the-edge-device project to an ESP32-CAM module in order to get my analog water meter back into Home Assistant for monitoring, trending, and alarming. The audience is interested geeks and ESP32 beginners attempting to deploy this project for the first time. I'm going to expand on jomjol's instructions and talk about some of the mistakes I made along the way. I will also describe the kludgey, roundabout way I integrated data via MQTT back into Home Assistant. 

Results first: 

Home Assistant integration done!

Lots more details "after the jump".

Top Reads of 2021

I read a lot of books this year. I have been reading a lot in the last few years, and I wanted to start capturing some of the best for posterity. Here are most of my 5-star reads from 2021, with links to each book's Goodreads page and my review. Ordered by date read, with most recent at the bottom. 

The Sirens of Mars: Searching for Life on Another World - Sarah Stewart Johnson
A poetic and contemplative account of humanity's search for life on Mars, and the author's own experiences in the field. Space non-fiction. (my review)

Where Is My Flying Car?: A Memoir of Future Past - J. Storrs Hall
A masterclass in persuasive technical writing; a no-holds-barred deep-dive into the technology, energy, policy, and regulation (and more) that's holding back flying cars a salty career scientist, wrapped into a meta-thesis about technological stagnation. Technology non-fiction. (my review). 

A Promised Land - Barack Obama
A highly readable, insightful, and captivating memoir allowing the reader to peek behind the curtain of the world's most powerful office, which remains surprisingly non-inflammatory given the last few years of global politics. Memoir. (my review)

Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX - Eric Berger
An addictive and page-turning look at the chaotic, high-stakes early days of SpaceX from a senior space writer at Ars Technica, mostly covering the years 2002 through 2008. Space non-fiction. (my review)

Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men - Caroline Criado Pérez
One of the most impactful books I read this year that I've most recommended to friends and colleagues (particularly males), an eye-opening and persuasive look at systematic gender biases in science, policy and data. Feminism/science/policy. (my review)

Children of Time - Adrian Tchaikovsky
Biology driven, "lost in space", far-future parallel plotlines with a lot of "woah!" moments. Science fiction. (my review)

Why Nuclear Power Has Been a Flop: at Solving the Gordian Knot of Electricity Poverty and Global Warming - Jack Devanney
A thorough dissection of misconceptions and myths about nuclear energy, and the bull case for how and why nuclear is required for future decarbonization. Available free online here. Energy/science non-fiction. (my review)

Stoner - John Williams
Not about cannabis or written by a composer - I was not expecting to so deeply love this tale of William Stoner, a tortured academic  with a horrible marriage and dead-end career. Fiction/classics. (my review)

Underland: A Deep Time Journey - Robert Macfarlane
A beautiful, reflective and captivating travelogue-style exploration of all things underground, and their societal and cultural importance. Science/nature non-fiction. (my review)

Influence, New and Expanded: The Psychology of Persuasion - Robert B. Cialdini
The book you should read before making major purchase to inoculate yourself against common (and extremely effective) persuasive techniques of salespeople (also useful in other areas of life). Psychology non-fiction. (my review)

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer - Siddhartha Mukherjee
An Isaacson-caliber biography of a complicated subject; this book is a thorough, fascinating, and engaging history of cancer diagnoses and treatments. Medicine/science non-fiction. (my review)

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion - Jonathan Haidt
An exploration of human morality and why our morals are different; this incredible book increased my patience and helped me understand where other people are coming from. Psychology non-fiction. (my review)

2001: A Space Odyssey - Arthur C. Clarke
Must-read classic sci-fi with a perfect balance of awe and existential terror. Science fiction. (my review)

Failure to Learn: The BP Texas City Refinery Disaster - Andrew Hopkins
A must-read for anyone in manufacturing, chemical or process industries where process safety risks exist, and one of the best books on leadership and management I've ever read. Manufacturing/safety non-fiction. (my review)

The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race - Walter Isaacson
I love almost everything by Isaacson, but his latest subject is supremely interesting and the content could not be more relevant for building a deeper understanding of highly relevant technologies to fight COVID, as well as genetic engineering issues for years to come. Science/biography. (my review)

The Complete Maus: A Survivor's Tale - Art Spiegelman
Compelling, funny, and sad graphic novel of the author's family's experience in concentration camps in WW2. Graphic novel/biography non-fiction. (my review)

Hyperion - Dan Simmons
It's the Canterbury Tales (a band of unlikely travellers telling each other stories) but in a distant space-faring future, as they travel to confront a mysterious time-bending monster. Science fiction. (my review)

The Mission - David W. Brown
An extraordinarily entertaining account of the science and politics behind NASA's Europa Clipper mission, in the works for decades and now set to launch in ~2023. Space non-fiction. (my review)

The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity - David Graeber, David Wengrow
A fascinating and compelling take on "pre-history" that challenges every assumption and narrative about so-called pre-agriculture societies; the two Davids make pre-history exciting by starting from the hypothesis that ancient societies were comprised of smart, interesting, culturally and politically mature peoples. History/anthropology non-fiction. (my review)