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Mixed news in renewable energy

Province's new wind turbines starting to crank out power

By: Larry Kusch

Posted: 01/12/2011 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

RUTH,BONNEVILLE@FREEPRESS.MB.CA Enlarge Image

Premier Greg Selinger stands next to a turbine that is soon to be hoisted up onto a tower at the St. Joseph Wind Farm Tuesday.

ST. JOSEPH -- In the coming weeks, 60 huge wind turbines will power the equivalent of 50,000 homes and swell local municipal tax coffers, but the company behind the province's biggest wind farm plans to soon more than double its production in Manitoba.

Mike Garland, chief executive officer of San Francisco-based Pattern Energy, said tough economic times and the U.S. financial crisis caused the St. Joseph Wind Farm project to be downsized.

Pattern once eyed a 300-megawatt wind farm in this community just west of Letellier and clearly visible from Highway 75, but the project was eventually scaled back to its current 138 megawatts. But now that the project is nearly completed and the company has demonstrated "that we do what we say we're going to do," Garland said, Pattern wants to sit down with the province and Manitoba Hydro to talk about the next phase.

"I'd love to start construction (by) the end of 2011," Garland said in an interview during the official opening of the wind farm on Tuesday.

Although not as ambitious as once envisioned, the St. Joseph Wind Farm will be the largest in the province once it is fully operational in mid-March. Only seven of the 60 gigantic turbines, mounted on towers 80 metres high, were running on Tuesday, but the company's local manager Ian Cunningham expects they will now come on stream at the rate of roughly one per day.

A second Manitoba wind farm at St. Leon, which opened five years ago, produces 99 megawatts of power.

Premier Greg Selinger, who attended Tuesday's opening, said wind power "perfectly complements" hydroelectric power production in Manitoba. He said the project will provide well over $200 million in economic benefits to the area over the 27-year life of the contract, including $44 million in municipal taxes and $38 million in payments to landowners.

Five years ago, the province set a target of producing 1,000 megawatts of power from wind within a decade, but it's likely to fall short of that. Selinger said Tuesday while 1,000 megawatts remains the goal, reaching it will be more difficult now that Ottawa has withdrawn support for such projects. (The St. Joseph project received $42 million in federal assistance.)

However, Selinger expressed confidence that as Hydro and the province gain more experience with wind power projects "we'll find a way of moving forward."

Garland, who was upbeat Tuesday about greatly expanding the St. Joseph project, said he did not think the end of the federal ecoENERGY program was an insurmountable hurdle. What was important to the first phase of the St. Joseph project was that the province, the community and Hydro acted in "a spirit of wanting to get things done," he said.

Meanwhile, Hydro chairman Vic Schroeder, who attended Tuesday's opening, said the Crown corporation would have to assess its power needs before entering into any new expanded wind-power deal with Pattern.

larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca

The St. Joseph Wind Farm

60 -- number of turbines, covering 125 square kilometres.

50,000 -- number of homes that can be powered by the wind farm (138 megawatts).

27 -- length in years of power deal between wind farm owner Pattern Energy and its client, Manitoba Hydro.

$345 million -- estimated cost of the project.

$95 million -- amount invested by Pattern Energy; Manitoba Hydro provided a loan covering the bulk of the project's costs.

6th -- rank in wind-farm power output in Canada (once completed).

-- Sources: Manitoba Hydro, Pattern Energy, Wikipedia

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition January 12, 2011 A4

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