Ontario Wind Farm Receives Final Approvals
Right here in my wonderful home province of Ontario, Canada, Brascan Power, a company more commonly associated with hydroelectric power gen, has received final government approvals this week to begin construction on their first wind power project.
The Prince Wind Farm is expected to go online in the second half of 2006 and will have the capacity to deliver 99 MW of juice into Ontario’s electricity market, enough to power almost 20,000 homes. This project was originally announced in November 2004, one of a number of successful bids in the Ontario provincial government’s request for proposals for 300 MW of new renewable energy supply.
Here are some of the technical details from an article at RenewableEnergyAccess.com…
The wind farm will be powered with 66 GE Energy 1.5 MW wind turbine generators located in the Townships of Prince, Dennis and Pennefather, northwest of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario.
A new substation and 14 km transmission line will be constructed to connect the wind turbine generators to an existing 230 kV transmission line.
For those of you familiar with Ontario Hydro’s history of ignoring renewable energy options, this and other recent initiatives are most welcome.
[via Renewable Energy Access]
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POSTED IN: Green Utilities, News, Wind
6 opinions for Ontario Wind Farm Receives Final Approvals
Jacob Murphy
Sep 22, 2005 at 8:59 am
Wow, that is an awesome development. I hope it is a raving success. Do you have any idea how the townsfolk in those areas are responding to this? In England there was some backlash against wind power because some people felt that it ruined the landscape. Is there any of that in Ontario?
I know that they have had that turbine down at the Exhibition for some time warming people to the idea of green energy.
Tim
Sep 22, 2005 at 9:56 am
There are currently two wind farm projects being considered in my area of Maine. Both are under opposition from locals because of the aesthetic impacts. (My area is a large tourist area because of the mountains, lakes, and scenery.) One project is about twice the size of the one mentioned here. It will be interesting to see what comes out of it.
Kevin Humphrey
Sep 22, 2005 at 11:44 am
Jacob - I really hope it goes well too. Ontario Hydro became too dependent on nuclear back in the 80’s and 90’s and I’d like to see us get that monkey off our backs. The area where this development is happening, which I believe is on the east shore of Lake Superior, is quite remote and lightly populated, so I don’t think there was much opposition. If this kind, or size, of development were to happen near Toronto, I think we’d be seeing more NIMBY’s (not in my backyard!).
Tim - It’s great so many of these types of developments are being considered and I agree that it’ll be interesting to see if they come to fruition. What I would like to see though is a smaller size of wind farms all around. I believe we need to work at decentralizing our power gen systems. Smaller farms and plants that feed their local communities as opposed to mega-projects that need 100’s of miles of transmission lines to feed their markets.
Thanks for stopping by, guys.
David
Sep 22, 2005 at 6:13 pm
I don’t think the Ontario Government is doing enough in this respect. Also, I don’t think a 99MW project is really worthwhile. That could not even supply Ottawa and area with power, and we are only one of many bigger areas in Ontario.
The projects should be looking at 200-500 MW projects positioned in a multitude of areas. I don’t think urban centres should be so annoyed or appauled at this kind of technology, especially if it meant a real decline in energy prices.
And I think the rest of Canada should follow suit. I for one think that with the most natural resources in the world, we should be looking at alternative, non-polluting and sustainable power generation so that we can protect our resources and eventually make butt-loads of profit off of selling a small share of them to the US and other countries.
I also think that lighter regulation of wind generation should be allowed for the home user (I don’t know how strict it is in Ontario, but if it was easy and cheap, I would expect to see a few more people with towers up).
Kevin Humphrey
Sep 23, 2005 at 10:17 am
David - I actually worked for Greenpeace in Toronto back in the early 90’s and trust me, what Ontario Hydro and the provincial government are doing now is a damn sight better than what was happening back then. I’d love to see more as well, but we’re making progress.
I disagree with you regarding the mega-project idea. I think we need to de-centralize our power gen systems and move to hundreds of the type of project we see here as opposed to huge projects that then need 100’s of km’s of transmission lines to move the power to market.
In terms of the opposition from people, especially in urban areas, over the aesthetics of wind farms and etc, unfortunately there will be NIMBY’s in every group and it’s a fact of human nature that a lot of people won’t accept the changes that are necessary until they have no other choice.
I know back in the early 90’s, most, if not all, urban and suburban areas wouldn’t allow personal wind projects. Again we’re dealing with the aesthetics and NIMBY attitudes, and those aren’t going to go away until there is no other choice.
While the rate of change to new technologies may seem slow at times, we are starting to make some significant progress, especially compared to where we were 15 or 20 years ago.
Thanks for your thoughts, David.
hunde bilder
Sep 21, 2007 at 9:42 am
nice
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