Wind, solar operators urged to invest now to protect infrastructure

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CALGARY – Wind and solar operators across Canada are being urged to reduce the likelihood of catastrophic grid outages by making infrastructure more resilient to climate change.

Renewable energy operators from across the country gathered at a conference in Calgary this week to discuss the threat that climate change-related extreme weather poses to their industry.

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Vittoria Bellissimo, president and CEO of the Canadian Renewable Energy Association, says all forms of electricity generation, including those that use fossil fuels, are vulnerable to damage or outages during natural disasters such as fires, floods and severe storms.

But he says that as renewables grow to account for a larger share of this country's total electricity generation, the industry needs to consider whether their infrastructure is ready for a changing climate.

“There is a worst-case scenario, but we're guessing what it is because we don't know yet,” Bellissimo said in an interview on the sidelines of a conference call Wednesday.

“If you look at the major events that we've seen in the last decade and a half, even in Alberta, we had the flood in 2013 — it was something that people didn't expect. The fires in Slave Lake and Fort McMurray, people didn't expect that… So we're going to have to manage in the future under uncertain conditions.”

In an extreme example of what bad weather can do to renewable energy infrastructure, a 2019 hailstorm that hit a solar farm in Texas damaged 400,000 of the 685,000 panels and caused more than $70 million in damage.

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Last month, another large hailstorm damaged a 3,000-acre solar farm near Houston, breaking hundreds of panels.

Marsh Canada's national head of natural disaster and climate, George Phan, said the 2019 Texas hurricane was a wake-up call for the industry.

“For (solar plant) operators and asset owners, this has resulted in significant increases in insurance premiums,” Phan told conference delegates on Wednesday.

“Insurance is the canary in the climate change coal mine.”

In turn, the renewable energy sector knows that it will be vulnerable to adverse weather conditions in the coming years. Worryingly for the fast-growing solar sector, climate models show that the number of large hail-producing storms in Western Canada could increase significantly as the planet warms.

Wildfires, which are expected to spread mostly, pose a direct threat to renewable energy infrastructure in their path, but can reduce the generating capacity of solar installations when smoke in the atmosphere blocks out sunlight.

Phan says there are many things renewable energy operators can do to make their assets more climate-proof, from investing in thicker, more brittle solar panels to creating fire buffer zones by clearing nearby vegetation.

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It's also important to avoid building renewable energy infrastructure in disaster-prone areas, he said.

The conversation began amid debate across the country about how quickly the transition to renewable energy can be made without jeopardizing the stability of the electricity grid.

In Alberta in particular, the explosion of growth in the renewable electricity sector combined with the rapid phase-out of coal power has put pressure on the reliability of the power grid. In January of this year, the province's power system was forced to issue an emergency grid alert when it came close to breaking down due to a series of natural gas plant outages as well as gusty winds during a severe freeze.

The province experienced power shortages last week, with many fossil fuel generators going offline and short-term outages due to low wind and sunshine.

Matt Cote, program director of operations at the Canadian Renewable Energy Association, acknowledged that grid reliability is a growing concern and that climate change risks only exacerbate it. But he said one type of generation is less vulnerable to bad weather than others.

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“Beans have a worse exposure to sunlight than wind. Freezing is worse for the wind than the sun,” Kot said in an interview.

“And then (Alberta) had this cold snap — there were problems with getting these gas plants … It's a whole system that's vulnerable for a variety of reasons.”

Making Canada's electricity grid more resilient to climate change will require financial investment from developers and utilities, and ultimately, those costs will be borne by consumers in the form of higher energy bills, Cote said.

But he says resiliency investments across the network will ultimately prevent costly system outages from Mother Nature's wrath.

“You can pay in advance or you can pay when the power goes out and it's minus 40. I prefer to pay in advance,” Cote said.

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