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magazine / jun09
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June 2009 issue |
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FEATURE
On with the wind (Page
4 of 6)
Economic uncertainties, logistical challenges and environmental debates are buffeting this fast-growing energy sector
By John Lorinc with photography by Benoit Aquin
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| Installing wind turbines near Carleton, Que.,
is an industrial-scale operation. Workers get ready to hoist a rotor with 40-metre blades into position.
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On Wolfe Island, in the St. Lawrence River a short ferry
ride from Kingston, Ont., Peggy Smith and Sarah
McDermott scan a pastoral landscape renowned for its birds
as we gingerly navigate a battered SUV along a concession
road. In the hayfields on either side of the road are clouds
of swallows, red-winged blackbirds, upland sandpipers and
short-eared owls. Twenty percent of the world’s bobolinks
— a prairie songbird that makes a 20,000-kilometre annual
migration — live here. A pair of ospreys have made an elaborate nest from sticks perched on top of an old telephone
pole. The island is officially designated as an important
birding area because many migratory species stage here,
spending several weeks replenishing body fat to prepare
themselves for the rest of their journey.
| Bird Studies Canada wants government
agencies to restrict wind farms from
wetlands and migration corridors. |
“If you look left, there will be five towers in here,” says
Smith, a labour lawyer and long-time Wolfe Island resident,
as she munches on an apple. “And there will be 30 over there,
which is the most significant birding habitat on the island. On
a typical day, we have raptors coming in and out of here.”
A little farther on, McDermott, a gardener who organizes
the annual Wolfe Island MusicFest, gestures toward a
hedgerow next to a fallow field leading to the shore. “It’s really
hard to imagine that we’ll have 20 turbines in front of us.”
“More than that,” replies Smith. “Thirty-one.”
| Anatomy of a wind turbine |
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Most standard industrial-scale turbine towers are
bolted to a several-metre-deep base made from poured
concrete and rebar. The tapered towers come in three hollow
sections, each fabricated from steel that is
several centimetres thick. A ladder, with rest platforms, runs
up the inside.
At the top of the tower sits the nacelle, which houses the
mechanical innards of the turbine and can rotate laterally.
The nacelle on a standard 1.8-to-2.3-megawatt turbine is
the size of a city bus.
Inside is a sensitive gearbox that transfers the rotations
of the blades through a drive shaft with an optimal speed
of 1,800 revolutions per minute. The shaft drives a generator
that produces an electrical current, which is directed
down through the tower in a heavily insulated cable and
into a buried transmission line.
The three fibreglass blades are bolted to a hub housing
at the front of the nacelle. A 5,500-kilogram blade can be
more than 60 metres long and is mounted on a frame, using
aerospace moulding and fabrication techniques. The blades
are hollow and are designed to swivel on their axes, depending
on the strength of the prevailing wind. They have an
aerodynamic cross-section and rows of small fins to improve
efficiency and reduce noise. Some models are curved
slightly, like the blade of a hockey stick.
Instruments on the outside of the nacelle gauge wind
speed and direction and transmit the readings to a
computer inside the nacelle, so the pitch of the blades and
the orientation of the hub can be adjusted to maximize the
generating potential at any given time.
A turbine generates power when the blades move at
between 15 and 90 kilometres per hour. At slower speeds,
the turbine draws all the power for its on-board computers
and lights. When the wind exceeds 90 kilometres per hour,
the turbine shuts off automatically, because the torque is so
strong that it could damage the gearbox.
Due to variations in wind speed, turbine blades don’t
rotate all the time. In fact, a well-situated turbine has a
so-called capacity factor of about 25 to 40 percent, a
figure equivalent to the amount of electricity actually
produced as a proportion of what the turbine would
produce if it operated at maximum output all the time.
J.L.
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Several years ago, some Wolfe Islanders signed on to a
plan to build a modest wind farm, which would be owned cooperatively
by the residents so that they could disconnect from
the provincial grid. But after a series of complex transactions,
some of which remain the subject of a lawsuit, Canadian
Hydro Developers, a Calgary firm, took over the project
and expanded it to 86 turbines, to be built on the island’s
sleepy western’s pastures and run on a for-profit basis.
The enlarged version has not been embraced by all the
community’s residents, although it has the support of the
local council. McDermott and Smith have fought the
venture at the Ontario Municipal Board and in the courts,
arguing that it will harm sensitive birding habitats.
The criticisms touched a nerve. After McDermott’s partner,
Chris Brown, wrote an article criticizing the project and
the way it was approved, he received a cease-and-desist letter
from the company’s lawyers. CEO John Keating dismisses the
opponents as “a vocal minority,” saying, “The stakeholders had
ample opportunity to comment.” The project has received
regulatory and political approvals, and Keating’s company is
absorbing the expense of burying the power lines connecting
the turbines to the substation that links the wind farm to the
transmission grid.
Nevertheless, the Wolfe Island wind farm has joined an
expanding list of southern Ontario wind projects that have
generated a growing backlash among some residents who
balk at the presence of these highly visible, and sometimes
noisy, facilities. The developers usually win these battles, but
not always. Last October, for example, EPCOR (formerly
the City of Edmonton’s power and water utility) abruptly
cancelled plans for a 160-megawatt wind farm on the Lake
Huron shore, the second phase of a development known as
Kingsbridge. The company pulled the plug on the $300 million
venture — which would have produced electricity for 45,000 homes — because of “uncertainty” resulting from
regulatory delays and municipal opposition. (Ontario’s loss
could be British Columbia’s gain: a month later, EPCOR
announced a bid to build a 142-megawatt wind farm as part
of that province’s clean-energy strategy.)
The reasons for the opposition vary, and they’re not all
obstructionist. Kristopher Stevens, executive director of the
Ontario Sustainable Energy Association (OSEA), has scrutinized
the causes behind the “social friction” whipped up
by some wind projects. In many cases, the reasons trace back
to rubber-stamp public consultations and the fact that residents
don’t reap many rewards of their local natural resource.
Old-fashioned NIMBYism, however, remains an
indisputable feature of wind politics. On the rocky,
exclusive shores of Georgian Bay, affluent cottagers are up
in arms about a proposal by the Wasauksing First Nation
and SkyPower, the Toronto wind developer, to build a
40-megawatt farm on Parry Island, near Port Severn. The
fight seems to be mainly about location and the view. Bob
Duncanson, executive director of the Georgian Bay
Association, claims that SkyPower will build “superhighways”
on the island and suggests the band council doesn’t
really know what it’s getting into. (Wasauksing officials
didn’t return calls.)
Some cottagers have fretted publicly about falling property
values. Duncanson, a witness to other anti-turbine
fights, also frets about what will become of these structures when their 20-year life expectancy expires. He asserts that
former gravel quarries have less impact on the scenery
than do turbines.
“The pits are hidden,” says Duncanson. With a decommissioned
wind farm, “you’re going to see the turbines in all
their oozing, rusting glory.”
| Comments on this article | View all comments (17) | Leave a comment | Having worked with alternative energy and fossil fuels the conclusion is we are better off with both. There are increased costs for backup generation, however these are offset because there is a requirement for reserve capacity to maintain reliability of the system. While backup generation is often fueled by fossel fuels, these plants do not run when the wind is blowing thus reducing overall emissions. There are health concerns with wind power but they are less damaging than those associated with fossil fuels. Wind turbines do ruin the landscape and I would not put them in an area where it would ruin the landscape and tourism would suffer. Often overlooked is the comparison of fuel savings from energy efficiency that each homeowner can do to offset their energy footprint. We can all look to the problems caused by power generation but we often forget that these are a result of our consumer demand for more power. We can all be part of the solution.
After researching extensively on coal, nuclear, hydro, solar and wind energy, the only two that stand out of the five is solar and wind. Both are so simple, capturing sunlight and having blades spinning in the wind. I’ve come to the conclusion that sometimes the better things in life are the simplest. With a life expectancy of 30-45 years for both solar and wind, this is far better than mining coal and uranium. It makes no sense: digging holes in the earth to get oil, coal and uranium for energy, or having a wind turbine spinning with the wind and solar panels following the sun for energy. I’ve see many large wind turbines during my investigation, and love the soft noise they make, however standing only 20 feet from them.you can’t hear a thing. Also: most large turbines take up 4 ft of space in a field, which in turn powers 600 homes and can easy plant crop right up to the base. I know which route I’m going — the easy and reliable way.
I am developing a sound insulated home wind turbine power conversion system. Of course it will only work on about 10% of the homes in a community at one time. However during the time those 10% are working they will produce power for 4-8 additional homes. The end result is that if that 10% are tied into the grid they can provide electricity for up to 90% of the homes in that community. Plus there is no need for billions to build new distribution lines, access roads, etc. This is no pipe dream this is the beginning of the end to global warming.
Sam Rotor
i live on Ontario's Oak ridge the wind usually blows strong up here though throughout June of this year June 1-21 2009 we have only had two days of sustained windspeed of plus 15km per hour for at least 18 hours straight. the other 19 days the minimum 15km wind speed hasn't been maintained for a single hour. Where do people get off saying there is no need for backup generation? You have a lot of expensive generators sitting idle as a stark testament to environmental "ignorance"
Re M.Anderson. Wind power does not require 100% fossil fuel backup. All power generators require "backup", it is called contigency and spinning or regulating reserves. Reserves are usually sourced through hydro which ramps up and down rapidly. This is one of the lies perpetrated by wind opponents. The amount of reserves required is dictated by your largest baseload generator. I guess nuclear power needs "backup" as well
Wind power is the great smoke and mirror hoax of the new century. Billions are being wasted on this fairy-tale symbol. Wind needs to be backed up by fossil fuel 100% of the time. So in the end you need to pay for both. Sadly, until thousands and thousands of hectares of land are filled with these rusting industrial machines will people wake up from their green "dream" and realize what a waste it was.
Wind energy can help to decrease the carbon dioxide level in the earth's atmosphere to below 350 parts per million. We must support wind energy the alternative is unacceptable.
You state that Ontario will need to build 2000 kilometers of transmission corridors in order to bring privately owned Green Power to the market. While Wind Turbine land owners are willing sellers and are compensated for hosting wind turbines, the same cannot be said about home and landowners along these 2000 Kilometers whose land is expropriated by Hydro One Networks so that privately operated green power companies can get their product to the Golden Horseshoe market.
We are not NIMBY’s. Our family and our neighbours have hosted 2 major power corridors since 1965 and we are about to get our third line. Hydro One will now control over 20% of our property and Hydro One believes that there is very little financial damage to our property. We do not agree with their assessment.
Since March of 2007 we have had to put our lives on hold as we cannot sell land that in the words of professional appraisers is “condemned”. As home and landowners we have been forced to invest thousands of dollars in time and costs to meet with lawyers, land agents, and Hydro One bureaucrats all of whom are paid by the Ontario taxpayer.
Cabinet Ministers refuse to talk or meet with us and it appears to the 400 landowners from Bruce to Milton that we are orphans in the system. While we support Green and renewable power we are being forced to subsidize it’s the Ontario electrical consumer.
Dennis Threndyle
RR# 1 Elmwood, Ontario
NOG 1S0
416.662.4395
dentrhren@rogers.com
I just drove past a wind farm in upstate New York and reflected on the condemnation of such installations. The purported negative impact on the rural aesthetics that drive tourism in different areas clearly exemplifies the fever pitch at which the anti-wind camps operate. If the emotional energy generated by human resistance to change could be tapped into, we might not need any other supply sources.
It is unfortunate that many voters emerge into the working world and spend their lives without a basic understanding of energy flow, where it comes from and that it is the lifeblood of society. As pointed out many years ago, the event of "peak oil," as first coined by U.S. geologist King Hubbert, like it or not, will change our business-as-usual growth-oriented societies forever. Many knowledgeable energy experts agree that peak oil has arrived.
Today’s young will live in a renewable energy society, or they will have no society. So, the question boils down to which is more important: catering to NIMBY wishes today, or for us collectively laying the groundwork for a sustainable society?
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