The Rural Voice, 1994-04, Page 41toured five Alberta sites, many of
them or farms and ranches. Eli
Walter of Dutch Valley Produce, for
instance, has installed three 65
kilowatt (kW) turbines on his Pincher
Creek windfarm. It's the culmination
of a fascination with wind -power that
dates back tohis father's windmill
for pumping water.
George and Pam Johnson
installed a 150 kW turbine in
May 1993 with a 22 meter
rotor on a 30 meter tower. Last
summer also saw the opening of the
9 MW Cowley Ridge Windplant at
Cowley, Alberta with 25 360 kW
turbines.
Typical of the pioneering spirit in
Alberta is Orrin Hart. A
third generation farmer,
rancher and cattle breeder in
the Claresholm district of
southwestern Alberta, he
decided in 1990 to offset the
high cost of the electricity
needed for irrigation pumps
by installing a windmill. In
1985 he was founding
president of the Small
Power Producers Assoc-
iation of Alberta which
negotiated agreements to
allow small power producers
access to the Alberta
electrical grid so they could
sell surplus power and buy
power back when it was
needed.
That kind of arrangement
was a long time coming in
other jurisdictions such as
Ontario. It took years for
wind -power advocates to
convince Ontario Hydro
they should be allowed to
hook into the grid. Recent
cutbacks at Ontario Hydro have
meant a freeze on Hydro accepting
power from new generating sources
not owned by the utility.
That hasn't stopped Canadian
Agra from forging ahead with its
plans to harness the prevailing
westerly winds off Lake Huron.
Phillip Andres, who heads the wind -
power project for Canadian Agra,
says that the long-term goal of the
new management at Ontario Hydro is
for sustainable production, so the
freeze is likely short term.
Ontario Hydro has been a partner
in the current experiment at
Kincardine along with Canadian
Agra, Natural Resources Canada
CANMET and the Ontario Ministry
of the Environment and Energy. The
windmill was installed at a cost of
$160,000 to test the possibilities of
wind -power along Lake Huron. For
Canadian Agra, with a large amount
of land along the shoreline from
south of Goderich to Port Elgin, and
a corporate philosophy of sustainable
land use, the move into wind -power
was natural. Andres, who farmed
organically with his brother
Lawrence for eight years, says that
wind -power is a perfect match with
farming as a way to add extra income
from the land. The tower
that the recorded period had been the
calmest in 22 years. There was
almost a 30 per cent difference
between the wind speeds at the best
and the worst sites tested. The wind
speeds recorded at the most
favourable site met those considered
viable by international standards.
The Lagerwey-built wind
turbine was purchased in the
winter of 1992 and arrived in
May 1993. It was installed in July
and generated its first power in
August. By March, it had generated
130,000 kW hours and Andres
anticipates that in the first full year it
will produce 200,000 kW hours.
Part of the the Kincardine
experiment was to see if
modern windmills could
stand up to the weather
along the Lake Huron
coast. It would be hard to
have chosen a better winter
than 1993-94 to test the
durability of the machine.
Andres describes some of
the conditions this winter
as "horrific", especially one
day -long freezing rain
storm. He worried about ice
build-up on the rotor blades
but there was no
accumulation. Throughout
the storm the machine
continued to generate
power, only shutting down
the next day when the
weather vane froze in
place, preventing the
machine from adjusting to
the different wind
direction. He had to climb
the tower and free up the
wind vane and the machine
was soon back in service.
In fact, durability is one of the
hallmarks of modern windmills.
Reliability has risen from 50 to 60
per cent in an earlier generation of
machines to 95 per cent now, a rate
exceeded only by hydro -electric
(water -powered) generating facilities.
Life -span of the machines has
improved from 1-5 years in the mid-
1970s to a projected 30 years by the
mid-1990s.
With improving reliability has
come reduced costs. While capital
costs have soared with from $600 to
$2,500 per kW hour for coal and
$1,800 to $5,500 per kW hour for
Philip Andres— wind -power has a huge potential to provide
electrical energy at low cost.. Canadian Agra's windmill, below.
installations, because of their small
base, take only a small fraction of the
land out of production.
Extensive testing was
undertaken before it was
decided to go ahead with the
Kincardine project. Five monitoring
towers were installed at various
Canadian Agra properties in the
Kincardine area to test wind strength
at the 20 meter and 30 meter height.
The winds between January 5, 1992
and January 5, 1993 were monitored,
then compared with historical records
kept by weather stations at airports in
the region. Those records showed
APRIL 1994 37