Connect with us

Alberta

Central Alberta sees Covid-19 outbreaks in Beaver County (67) and Starland County (63)

Published

2 minute read

Images from the Province of Alberta  

Covid-19 cases in Alberta are on a downward trend over the last few days.  There are 211 active cases in Central Alberta.  157 of those cases came up in the last week.

With 14 more positives diagnosed in the last 24 hours, there are now 145 active COVID-19 cases in Central Alberta. 106 people have been diagnosed in the last week (July 14-20).

In Central Alberta two rural counties have by far the most cases.  Beaver County at 67 and Starland County at 63 account for 130 of the 211 total cases.  Here’s the Central Alberta breakdown in cases including municipalities with no cases at all.

Central Alberta Communities – Active Cases
  1. Beaver County – 67
  2. Starland County – 63
  3. Settler County – 12
  4. Red Deer – 10
  5. MD of Wainwright – 8
  6. Kneehill County – 7
  7. Lacombe County – 7
  8. Flagstaff County – 6
  9. Paintearth County – 5
  10. Red Deer County – 5
  11. Drumheller – 5
  12. Special Areas 2 – 4
  13. Vermillion River County – 3
  14. Sylvan Lake – 2
  15. Lacombe – 2
  16. Camrose – 2
  17. Camrose County – 2
  18. Clearwater County – 2
  19. Mountain View County – 1
  20. Wetaskiwin – 1
  21. Olds – 1
  22. Provost County – 1
  23. Ponoka County – 0
  24. Two Hills County – 0
  25. Wetaskiwin County- 0
  26. Minburn County – 0
  27. Special Areas 4 – 0

In the City of Red Deer there are 10 active cases.  3 in “North” Red Deer, 2 in “West” Red Deer, and 5 in Red Deer – East.

Three people have died from COVID-19 in Central Alberta.  Early on in the pandemic someone over 80 years old from Camrose died.  In more recent days 2 senior citizens have passed away.  One was from the County of Two Hills, and the other was from the Wainright area.

Here are the total number of cases for the entire province including all the recoveries.

Todayville is a digital media and technology company. We profile unique stories and events in our community. Register and promote your community event for free.

Follow Author

Alberta

Temporary Alberta grid limit unlikely to dampen data centre investment, analyst says

Published on

From the Canadian Energy Centre

By Cody Ciona

‘Alberta has never seen this level and volume of load connection requests’

Billions of investment in new data centres is still expected in Alberta despite the province’s electric system operator placing a temporary limit on new large-load grid connections, said Carson Kearl, lead data centre analyst for Enverus Intelligence Research.

Kearl cited NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang’s estimate from earlier this year that building a one-gigawatt data centre costs between US$60 billion and US$80 billion.

That implies the Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO)’s 1.2 gigawatt temporary limit would still allow for up to C$130 billion of investment.

“It’s got the potential to be extremely impactful to the Alberta power sector and economy,” Kearl said.

Importantly, data centre operators can potentially get around the temporary limit by ‘bringing their own power’ rather than drawing electricity from the existing grid.

In Alberta’s deregulated electricity market – the only one in Canada – large energy consumers like data centres can build the power supply they need by entering project agreements directly with electricity producers.

According to the AESO, there are 30 proposed data centre projects across the province.

The total requested power load for these projects is more than 16 gigawatts, roughly four gigawatts more than Alberta’s demand record in January 2024 during a severe cold snap.

For comparison, Edmonton’s load is around 1.4 gigawatts, the AESO said.

“Alberta has never seen this level and volume of load connection requests,” CEO Aaron Engen said in a statement.

“Because connecting all large loads seeking access would impair grid reliability, we established a limit that preserves system integrity while enabling timely data centre development in Alberta.”

As data centre projects come to the province, so do jobs and other economic benefits.

“You have all of the construction staff associated; electricians, engineers, plumbers, and HVAC people for all the cooling tech that are continuously working on a multi-year time horizon. In the construction phase there’s a lot of spend, and that is just generally good for the ecosystem,” said Kearl.

Investment in local power infrastructure also has long-term job implications for maintenance and upgrades, he said.

“Alberta is a really exciting place when it comes to building data centers,” said Beacon AI CEO Josh Schertzer on a recent ARC Energy Ideas podcast.

“It has really great access to natural gas, it does have some excess grid capacity that can be used in the short term, it’s got a great workforce, and it’s very business-friendly.”

The unaltered reproduction of this content is free of charge with attribution to the Canadian Energy Centre.

Continue Reading

Alberta

Alberta Next: Taxation

Published on

A new video from the Alberta Next panel looks at whether Alberta should stop relying on Ottawa to collect our provincial income taxes. Quebec already does it, and Alberta already collects corporate taxes directly. Doing the same for personal income taxes could mean better tax policy, thousands of new jobs, and less federal interference. But it would take time, cost money, and require building new systems from the ground up.

Continue Reading

Trending

X