Proposed wind farm near Brooks would be largest in Canada

A huge new wind farm is being proposed southwest of Brooks.

The Buffalo Plains Wind Farm would consist of 86 turbine towers and a peak capacity of 514 megawatts.

It would be the largest in Canada when fully built out near the village of Lomond, in Vulcan County, potentially by 2023.

The developer, a Canadian subsidiary of German renewable company ABO Wind, submitted its formal application for the project to provincial regulators on Wednesday.

The Alberta Utilities Commission posted the application on Wednesday. Pending approval in 2021, construction would begin the following year and be complete in mid-2023, according to a tentative schedule.

The facility would be located on portions of 17,500 acres of privately owned, cultivated land. Notably affected land would total several acres near each of the 86 towers along with an underground gathering system that would connect to the AltaLink distribution system near Milo, Alta.

ABO operates in 16 countries in Europe, South America and Africa.

The largest wind farm currently operating in Canada is the Seigneurie de Beaupré facility (363 MW) in Quebec.

The Blackspring Ridge wind farm, also in Vulcan County, has a capacity of 300 MW and has been in operation since 2014 in partnership between Enbridge and French company EDF Renewables.

The Capital Power wind farm near Whitla in the County of Forty Mile would have a top capacity of 351 MW if two expansions are completed as planned over the next two years.