Saskatchewan provides power to Alberta during shortage

Saskatchewan provided Alberta with over 150 megawatts of power over the weekend – as the province faced the possibility of rotating power outages due to extreme cold.

In a post to X Saturday evening, Premier Scott Moe announced the province was assisting its western neighbour.

“SaskPower is providing 153 MW of electricity to AB this evening to assist them through this shortage,” Moe said in the post.

The premier added that the electricity would be provided by SaskPower’s natural gas and coal-fired power plants – taking the opportunity to criticize the federal government’s environmental policies.

“That power will be coming from natural gas and coal-fired plants, the ones the Trudeau government is telling us to shut down (which we won’t),” Moe said.

Alberta residents received an emergency alert at around 7 p.m. Saturday night. The warning urged residents to limit their electricity use to “essential needs only.”

“Minimize the use of space heaters. Delay use of major power appliances. Delay charging electric vehicles and plugging in block heaters. Cook with microwave instead of stove,” the alert read.

In a statement to CTV News, Alberta’s Minister of Utilities Nathan Neudorf said extremely cold conditions were straining power sharing across western Canada.

“On top of high demand of our own energy generation, Alberta’s grid receives electricity from neighbouring provinces. Extreme weather in Saskatchewan and British Columbia is impacting electricity sharing, which is also a contributing factor to tonight’s grid alert,” Neudorf said in the statement.

The entirety of Alberta and Saskatchewan remain under extreme cold warnings Sunday. Conditions including wind chills of up to -40 to -55 are expected to persist through Tuesday.

The Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO) ended its grid alert at around 9 p.m.