This week in Canada.

[riser4]

Do you guys have Casse Croute in New Brunswick?

I think I'm travelling through the Havelock border crossing exclusively from now on to hit this: https://www.lefatshack.com/

Never have so many Harley guys been right about anything!

4oz burger, eh? Tabernak! I like a 5 or 6 oz burger. No body serves that. It's either 4oz or 8 to 10oz. Too small or too big. However, $10 funny money for Le Fromage Bacon Double is not too shabby.

[grinch]

The old girlz love the fish burgers here. Happy NB day

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[rideit]

Hey hosers, what is the smoke situation in southern BC/Alberta right now? Trying to decide if a trip up north is wise this week.
The Canadian fire map site is giving me epilepsy…

[apex dave]

The Okanagan is somewhat smokey today. Like a 5 out of 10.

[aqua toque]

Townsite of Lake Louise closed until further notice.



go away

[BCMtnHound]

Ya, purple air showing the entire SE of BC and N.Thompson between 100 and 150AQI (US) at best. Talked to Dad this morning, and confirms Kootenay Lk air not great.

Nice here in the Sunshine Coast though!

[rideit]

Townsite of Lake Louise closed until further notice.



go away

Tate will trade your overpriced, crowded majesty for ours.

[Stuntmonkey]

Clear in fernie.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calga...ning-1.6929617

AB has the dumbest fucking premier ever. Just say you’re bowing to Suncor and Imperial at least.




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[crashidy]

Clear in fernie.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calga...ning-1.6929617

AB has the dumbest fucking premier ever. Just say you’re bowing to Suncor and Imperial at least.




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Not completely against this. We had a solar company wanting to lease a full section of AAA soil in central Alberta. Take away extremely productive farm land, wouldn't buy but only lease for significantly less than it was worth. No guarantee for cleaning up when panels meet end of life. Concrete poured all through the field. Heavily reliant on government funding.

Need to choose better places. Filling field with solar install of food isn't the answer.

[m2711c]

you guys got any deserts up there? They’re great places to hide shiny solar stuff….







fact.

[Ted Striker]

They have one desert zone, but it isn't flat.

[XXX-er]

the only real desert is I believe in Osoyoos at the can/ usa border and its part of the res

[wendigo]

the only real desert is I believe in Osoyoos at the can/ usa border and its part of the res

don't forget the Carcross desert

[Ted Striker]

the only real desert is I believe in Osoyoos at the can/ usa border and its part of the res

Yeah, that's what I was referring to (and maybe a bit near Kamloops), but I think they aren't technically deserts because of the lakes & rivers. Solar could work in some of that area, but the days are short due to the mountains.

Same goes for Carcross, and there would be a second problem of it being too far north. No sun in the winter, and even though the days are super long in the summer, the sun never gets very high.

[XXX-er]

Like everything in life you can goggle it,

I duno what the parameters are for a desert but they only list that desert in Osoyoos as the only Canadian desert

I did a horseback ride i that desert WAY back in the day with the FN, the horses were off the range somewhere close and they were pretty rough

[bennymac]

The sun height in the summer in the Carcross desert isn’t gonna be that much different than say Vancouver. Plus as you said the day length is gonna be very long (19 hours)

The main issue with solar in that desert is, as you mentioned, the lack of light in the winter when 1) energy needs are much higher due to demand for heating and lighting 2) hydroelectric generation is reduced

Solar does help a lot in northern territories in March, April and May when alpine snow hasn’t yet melted but the days are longer and sunnier than any of the provinces.

If you could store that summer solar energy for winter that would help. Batteries? Use it to pump water uphill to have that potential energy stored for winter use?

[XXX-er]

I met this guy Sid in Haida gwai who runs his own off-grid solar and is one of the only people who has any idea how to work on stuff over there, he told me the problem with solar up narth is that even when you got the sun in witnter it doesnt stay in the sky for very long before it goes behind a mtn and the batteries die

so a solar powered instal that workd fine in summer will die in winter cuz they did not over-design the system for lowest sun light

so they hire a chopper & Sid, they gotta replace the batteries cuz a service call to a remote site is so fucking expensive

[waxman]

Hey hosers, what is the smoke situation in southern BC/Alberta right now? Trying to decide if a trip up north is wise this week.
The Canadian fire map site is giving me epilepsy…

Fernie has been pretty good, really only 2 days where bike riding/outdoorsy stuff was uncomfortable. Some limited smoky periods during the days but that just means you can go shopping at local independent retailers while the smoke clears.

[Ted Striker]

The sun height in the summer in the Carcross desert isn’t gonna be that much different than say Vancouver. Plus as you said the day length is gonna be very long (19 hours)

Sure, but the sun doesn't get that high in Vancouver either. Noon angle on the summer solstice is approx 64°, making a 6/12 roof pitch (fairly steep) facing south in the lower mainland ideal for residential solar panels.

Noon angle on the summer solstice at Carcoss is approx 53°. The equinoxes would be just under 30° (below most of the the mountains), and of course on the winter solstice the sun never rises above the horizon.

But the dunes are way too cool to be ruined by building anything.

As you mentioned, solar should work really well in flatter areas like over toward Yellowknife, especially on terrain that's above where ice fog typically forms. And farther south like the Peace Country. Surely that would've been been more environmentally palatable than Site C.

[bennymac]

To be clear I’m not advocating for anything to be built in the Carcross desert - if we’re talking solar there are plenty of flat areas in the southern parts of the Territories that would be much better (less surrounding mountains)

And yeah the areas around Yellowknife and further south (Hay River/Ft Smith etc) are very flat and would get decent exposure. Shit the zone between Edmonton and the NWT border is a vast flat expanse of not much but swamp.

To clarify your statement the sun doesn’t rise above the horizon on the winter solstice at the arctic circle or above. Im guessing that’s about 1000km as the crow flies straight north from Carcross. The sun definitely comes up in Carcross although there are a lot of mountains there so it would depend on where you’re standing.

The sun comes up on the shortest day in places much further north like Dawson City and Fairbanks.

But speaking specifically for solar power it’s probably a moot point around that time of year.

[Ted Striker]

Yeah, I used the word horizon incorrectly to mean terrain and how much sky you can see. But thinking about it, I'm wrong anyway because the river valley.

And I wasn't implying you were advocating for anything. Just viewing this thread as a freewheeling conversation between a small subset of posters with occasional trolls of Xer's perception of latitude.

[bennymac]

^yes I totally understood where you were coming from

some sort of giant battery farm is being built next to the airport in Whitehorse - not sure how that’s gonna work (not because it won’t but because I know little about electrical engineering) - this is just uphill of a dam on the Yukon River - does the technology exist to keep energy stored from summer into very cold winter?

[Ted Striker]

I've spent some time in Whitehorse, and was told by a local that the river doesn't flow enough in the winter to run the hydro dam at capacity. At the time (in the late 2000s) they had a co-gen plant similar to the one we have in Bellingham, to supplement hydro with natural gas. Not that I know anything about this stuff - I had quipped that putting a fog machine near the end of a runway was an odd choice. (though not uncommon in the Canadian west)

Guessing the plan is to store as much surplus as they can during good months, to cut down on the fossil fuel burning during the winter. I do know that batteries don't like cold, so it's like south park...

1 charge batteries
2 ???
3 Power!

[bennymac]

Despite plenty of mountains and rivers and wind the Yukon gets a lot of its power from diesel generators - even in the summer. The Teslas, Leafs, and Bolts essentially all run on diesel.

[BCMtnHound]

Yup. If we should be building NG pipelines anywhere, it should be to the north. Still a huge undertaking, but given the current AB stance on renewables vs NG plants, maybe a subsidy here instead of south would placate both the industry and labour?