BLOWING IN THE WIND
The promise of alternative power sources — and the reality
It’s a crisp fall day, the temperature hovering just above zero, with a sharp wind that turns the blades of the turbines surrounding Doug and Maxine Smith’s home.
You can hear a dull whirr as the blades swing around, but it has never bothered the Smiths.
In their yard, the noise from the turbines has been measured at an average of 41 decibels — about the same, Doug says, as the noise you get inside a car while travelling on the highway.
“The hoarfrost is when you hear it the worst. You can hear them, swoosh, swoosh, swoosh,” Maxine says, her hand circling through the air.
The Smiths’ land plays host to about a third of the 83 turbines that make up the Centennial Wind Power Facility, located about 25 kilometres southeast of Swift Current.
You only have to spend a few weeks in Saskatchewan to know the province can get windy; Doug laughs that his family has known that “for years,” after his grandfather came to the region as a homesteader in 1905.
Maxine nods, “Oh yes, we certainly get the wind around here,” as Doug launches into a story about a tornado that ripped through their property as work was about to begin on the Centennial project, toppling the trailers that would house the construction workers.
Over the course of a year, Centennial generates enough energy to power about 65,000 Saskatchewan homes. When it hit commercial operation in 2006, it was the largest wind power facility in Canada.
Doug was a councillor on the Coulee RM when open houses about the facility were going on. He heard “maybe one or two” complaints, but says most people accepted the project. The RM got a new road out of it, too, because SaskPower had to haul gear to the site.
The project has always had its fair share of visitors. The Smiths often see tour buses pass by on their way to Centennial’s “point of interest” — a small display on a grid road where information boards overlook turbines. At the project’s lone office building, there’s even a visitor’s book for tourists to sign; flick through and you’ll come across names of people from the United States, Dorset and Luxembourg.
The Smiths would love to see more wind power in the province, with Doug quipping, “The sky’s the limit.”
It seems they will get their wish, too, after Premier Brad Wall announced this week that renewables will make up half of Saskatchewan’s power generation by 2030, with wind, hydro, solar and geothermal all thrown into the mix.
More details are set to be released by SaskPower on Monday, but it will take quite the investment. Currently, only a quarter of the province’s energy is drawn from renewables, mostly wind and hydro. Geothermal isn’t used at all, nor are there any large-scale solar operations.
Only about 400 homes and businesses in Saskatchewan use solar as a backup energy source. One of those users is John Klein in Regina, who had panels installed in April. In the summer they produced “as much power as the home was using,” though that’s dwindled as the sun sinks lower and days shorten.
The panels were quite the investment — around $8,000 after a rebate — but Klein is confident they will have paid for themselves in a decade or so.
Renewable energy advocates have long pointed to Saskatchewan as the ideal place for wind and solar power — we’re sunny, we’re windy, and we have a whole lot of space. With a similar climate, North Dakota has managed to up its wind generation to 17.5 per cent of all in-state generated electricity.
A Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives report released earlier this year, Building an Environmentally Sustainable Future for Saskatchewan, recommended the province phase out coal-fired power plants over the next 10 years and replace them with renewable energy sources. That’s unlikely to happen; SaskPower Minister Bill Boyd and the premier have said time and again in the legislative assembly that coal will continue to be part of Saskatchewan’s energy mix, hence the investment in the Boundary Dam carbon capture plant.
Darrell Crooks, operations manager at Centennial, points to the host of wind’s advantages: No fuel costs, clean emissions, if repairs need to be made only one turbine goes off-line, as opposed to an entire power plant. They’re also scalable, he says, “so as the province grows, you can simply can add onto an existing farm.”
“I’m a fan for sure, yeah,” he says. “I think the renewable energy sector is a good sector to be in right now.”
James Glennie from Saskatchewan Community Wind would be happy with any new investment in wind, but, like a hardened cynic, he won’t believe anything until he sees it.
“The concern we in the wind industry have is that SaskPower has a history of saying, ‘We’ll do this,’ or ‘We’ll do that,’ and then do nothing at all. It seems to happen every time there’s going to be an election,” he says.
Glennie references an April SaskPower announcement, in which the Crown trumpeted its target of 800 megawatts of wind power generation by 2030. Glennie says not only was the 12 per
The concern we in the wind industry have is that SaskPower has a history of saying, ‘We’ll do this,’ or ‘We’ll do that,’ and then do nothing at all.It seems to happen every time there’s going to be an election.
cent target “decidedly unambitious,” SaskPower then turned around “and buried the whole idea, and never announced any details.”
When the specifics of SaskPower’s plan are released, Glennie hopes it’s part of a detailed energy strategy for the province. He also hopes the Crown talks to people.
“The bigger issue now that SaskPower is missing, is public consultations,” he says.
“In all other jurisdictions, they talk to people — to environmental groups, to bird groups, all of them. The noticeable gap here is a reflection of how SaskPower works.
“We haven’t even had that basic conversation. The public hasn’t been involved at all.”