CCEM 102 – Question 3

[Carly Johansson]

Based on what you know about your community, do you think wind energy might be a possibility? If so, do you think the community would embrace the presence of wind turbines?

[Carly Johansson]

Whitehorse would be very interested in embracing wind. Yukon Energy Corporation installed two wind turbines as a part of a pilot project in the 90’s with a total capacity of 880kW. We are now looking at a much larger wind farm installation on Mt. Sumanic. A part of the appeal has been some very good education on the part of our local conservation society and from the City itself amounting to strong leadership. We are very lucky to have some high profile and more or less permanent champions for wind in the City!

[Carly Johansson]

Ryan
That is great to hear the Whitehorse has such champions – there are many champions of projects in Victoria, some have impacts on GHG’s and emissions like those for cycling etc. But as far as alternative energy goes, I haven’t hear of a champion that has actually gotten some real traction and made a large-scale project happen yet – folks are too concerned with homelessness or sewage treatment (not that those are bad things to focus on).

[Jen Grebeldinger]

I have seen small wind working well in micro niches in my community. It’s common to see wind turbines on the sailboats at anchor. The local Islands Trust planning office produced a study a couple of years ago about the zoning issues of wind turbines, but we really don’t have the resourse. To bad because it’s pretty much the leader for low cost, low carbon energy. The sailors would love to have a bit more wind in these parts!

[Jen Grebeldinger]

Kjell – How great to hear of the micro-wind energy production by turbines that folks have on their sailboats.

Up in Yellowknife on the north shore of Great Slave Lake, there are many houseboats in Yellowknife Bay that have wind turbines (& many have solar panels too). Are the sail boats able to keep their wind turbines up when they are out sailing on the water as well?

[Carly Johansson]

According to the Ministry of Energy and Mines – the 3 primary areas for Wind energy in BC are the North Vancouver Is., North Coast and Peace Region – Victoria is not in those regions. There is some media from 2013 about a potential windfarm on Southern Vancouver Island – TimberWest Forest Corp and EDP Renewables Canada Ltd are partnering with the T’Sou-ke First Nation to develop and operate a large-scale wind project of up to 300 megawatts of capacity. Scanning the media has revealed that TimberWest has asked the Capital Regional District to allow the rezoning of some land for meteorological station construction to test wind energy levels – looks like this project my still be going forward but at a slow pace at this point. It is difficult to find much more since 2013. Otherwise in Victoria, just like Kjell states – there is only small scale wind energy infrastructure.

[Jen Grebeldinger]

In the southwest part of the NWT, there is limited/minimal wind energy potential. ~7-10 years ago, the Arctic Energy Alliance also created Renewable Energy Profiles for all 33 communities in the NWT. In Fort Simpson, where I live, the average wind speed was calculated to be: 2.67 m/s. All of the communities in the Dehcho Territory, & the majority of the small communities not situated near a larger water body, were found to be a little below or just above 3 m/s.

The higher average wind speed readings came from Yellowknife at 4.07 m/s & the coastal Arctic NWT communities – Ulukhaktok at 3.84 m/s, Paulatuk at 3.97 m/s, Tuktoyaktuk at 4.66 m/s, and Sachs Harbour at 5.42 m/s.

Overall, the average wind speeds calculated about a decade ago reveal that wind only has high potential in Sachs Harbour and a medium potential in half a dozen or so other communities.

Recently, some folks have become aware of a more accurate/effective way to gather wind speed data than what was used 10 years ago, which may reveal a high wind energy potential for a number of communities here in the NWT where this improved technique is used.

[Jen Grebeldinger]

p.s. In seeking out a little extra information to help me understand the wind resource viability, I came across this information on the pioneering work that the country of Denmark has done. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Denmark

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