ALTERNATIVE ENERGY - PART III
October 2003
Articles
This is Part III in a 4-part series on the latest in alternative energy technologies.
The wind blusters across the surface of Lake Ontario onto the shoreline, blowing leaves off trees, hats off heads and turning umbrellas inside out. That gusting natural phenomenon has been left unharnessed save for the occasional kite-flyer and the hardiest of windsurfers.
Now the gusts that blow on the nation’s biggest city are captured by the newest and most conspicuous addition to the skyline. WindShare’s 30-story wind turbine might not be located in the best possible place to generate electricity but it sure is in a good place to generate interest in the fastest growing source of energy in the world. Since 1990 world wind energy production has increased at a rate of about 25% per year, in part driven by a dramatic improvement in wind power technology. With the new, much quieter wind turbines eliminating one of the two knocks on wind power, the only criticism left is aesthetic. But while some have bemoaned the view being tarnished on Prince Edward Island, or the proposed wind farms in places like the hills above Collingwood or on the sea off of Cape Cod, to others the sight of an environmentally clean, towering wind-powered electricity generator is the image of beauty itself.
As Jonathan Fitch, a U.S. wind power advocate working on installing new wind turbines for the local utility in Princeton, New Jersey said to the New York Times, “We realize that not everybody will like the look of it, but it’s better than the alternative, which is pollution.”
Toronto’s 94-metre tall wind turbine is the first of its kind in an urban setting anywhere in the world. While it creates electricity that is fed into the grid, it is essentially a demonstration to attract the world’s attention to the city, while attracting local attention to the future of wind power.
“Wind power has tremendous potential as a renewable source of electricity,” says internationally known environmentalist Dr. David Suzuki. “I’m delighted that we are seeing some progress on this in Toronto...Wind power will help address climate change and bring cleaner air, with important public health benefits. Renewable energy such as wind power is the way forward.”
You don’t have to tell the Danes that. Denmark is the world leader in wind power. In fact the nation’s top export is wind turbine manufacturing. Wind energy co-operatives are a nationwide movement with more than 100,000 members. Denmark estimates that 50% of their electricity needs will come from wind by 2030.
The success in Denmark is not going unnoticed as more and more wind farms are popping up all over the world. In 1996 there was 6,000 megawatts of installed wind turbines in the world. That number rose quickly to 22,000 megawatts by 2001.
The Canadian Wind Energy Association has a “wind vision for Canada” of 10,000 megawatts on installed wind power for Canada by 2010. That might be an enthusiastic goal but there are a number of projects underway. One of the more ambitious ones is a $150 million project on top of Blue Mountain expected to supply power to 32,000 homes. Hamilton-based Superior Wind Energy Inc. has been acquiring the wind energy rights for about 1,800 hectares of land in preparation to build the wind farm. The 67 proposed turbines will be 85 metres tall (to compare, remember the one in Toronto is 94 metres tall) and will produce up to 200 megawatts of electricity.
That will certainly make at least a small dent in the Ontario government’s Green Power Standard goal requiring 8% — about 3,000 megawatts — of the province’s electricity to come from new renewable sources by 2013. The idea of a Green Power Standard, while a good one, isn’t new. No less than 13 U.S. states have what is called “renewable portfolio standard”. For example, New Jersey has required 6.5% of the state’s power will come from renewables by 2012. The U.S. also has a federal tax credit giving wind farm operators a 1.8 cent deduction from his or her federal tax bill for every kilowatt hour of electricity generated.
While the Blue Mountain project is on the horizon, the five-turbine Huron Wind project near Kincardine on the shores of Lake Huron opened officially last November. Huron Wind is comprised of five 117-metre, 1.8 megawatt wind turbines and they are generating enough electricity to power 3,000 homes.
Canada’s action on the wind front isn’t going unnoticed either and indeed, the Danish-based magazine Wind Power Monthly has a photograph of Toronto’s Windshare turbine on the front cover. Inside the magazine Canada is praised for becoming a “hotbed of activity” in wind power.
To give a brief comparison from Sagrillo’s assessment, the Whisper H40 costs $1,495 (US) and produces 65 killowatt hours per month with an average wind speed of 10 miles/hour. The Jacobs 31-20 costs $23,500 (US) and will produce 1,644 killowatt hours per month with the same wind speeds.
Bob Budd is an ex-organic farmer, the director of Citizen’s For Responsible Energy, and gives workshops on building your own brakedrum windmill. The brakedrum windmill — designed by Hugh Spigott — sells for about $500. Budd says for that amount, with your own tools and with access to welding you can have your own windmill providing electricity for your house.
Windmills, while in some senses ideal for the Canadian environment, are not made for the urban or even the suburban resident. You need a lot of property to erect a windmill as it has to be higher than anything nearby. Many windmills are repaired on the ground meaning you need enough room to lower the tower to the ground. The windmill should be at least 30 feet above any obstruction (tree, house) within 500 feet. And the higher the better as the air higher up is cleaner with less variations.
Budd is highly supportive of those who want to integrate wind power into their electricity consumption but he decries the lack of support for the industry from government. Things are improving but he says that windmills would be more common if the government was providing tax credits to those who install renewable energy.
“We either have to get a tax credit or someone should be paying a carbon tax,” Budd stated at the Living Off The Grid workshop at the Ecology Retreat Centre earlier this year. “The world currently revolves around the oil industry. You don’t want to move the technology beyond oil until you exhaust oil; that is where we are at unfortunately. We (renewable energy producers) should at least get a tax credit. That is the reason you don’t see windmills lining the road.”
Budd also says that as with solar, people have to talk about serious conservation before they consider wind.
“On average a house in Canada uses 25 killowatt hours per day,” he said. “Our house uses 6 killowatt hours per day with p.v. (photovoltaic panels) and wind.”
WindShare says that the projected dividend to shareholders in year two is $8 per $100 share. To purchase shares you have to buy one $1 membership share to be a voting member and at least five “Preference Shares” at $100 each. Each Preference Share entitles the purchaser to a share of the electricity generated or the proceeds of its sale by WindShare. There were up to 16,000 Preference Shares available in Toronto and the first 8,000 — for the Exhibition Place turbine — sold out fast. Sales continue for the second half of the offering. To find out more about how to be a shareholder in the co-op you can download an info kit from the WindShare website (www.windshare.ca).
Part of Ontario’s EAP proudly talks about the price-freezing at 4.3 cents per killowatt hour until 2006 to stabilize electricity prices while new generating capacity is built. According to many experts including Budd, that 4.3 cents is part of the problem.
“We should make the price of hydro reflective per killowatt hour,” he said. “Right now there is no incentive to go to wind because hydro is so cheap. So unless you are down to 10 killowatt hours (per day) don’t even talk about wind power.”
The 4.3 cents that Ontarians so gladly pay doesn’t come close to paying for the electricity itself, not to mention the damage done to the environment by the coal-fired plants.
With Denmark as an example and a role model we can see that wind power does work and when pushed in that direction, our governments will have to encourage renewables. As far as those who don’t like wind power because the turbines block their views: Those complaints will surely dissipate as so much hot air.
Stay tuned next month for the final part in Vitality’s Alternative Energy Series.
• www.windstats.com (Wind Stats Newsletter)
• www.wpm.co.nz (Wind Power Monthly Magazine)
• www.canwea.ca (Canadian Wind Energy Association)
• www.windpower.org (Danish Wind Power)
• www.windshare.ca (WindShare)
WIND POWER
This is Part III in a 4-part series on the latest in alternative energy technologies.
By Paul Henderson
The wind blusters across the surface of Lake Ontario onto the shoreline, blowing leaves off trees, hats off heads and turning umbrellas inside out. That gusting natural phenomenon has been left unharnessed save for the occasional kite-flyer and the hardiest of windsurfers.
Now the gusts that blow on the nation’s biggest city are captured by the newest and most conspicuous addition to the skyline. WindShare’s 30-story wind turbine might not be located in the best possible place to generate electricity but it sure is in a good place to generate interest in the fastest growing source of energy in the world. Since 1990 world wind energy production has increased at a rate of about 25% per year, in part driven by a dramatic improvement in wind power technology. With the new, much quieter wind turbines eliminating one of the two knocks on wind power, the only criticism left is aesthetic. But while some have bemoaned the view being tarnished on Prince Edward Island, or the proposed wind farms in places like the hills above Collingwood or on the sea off of Cape Cod, to others the sight of an environmentally clean, towering wind-powered electricity generator is the image of beauty itself.
As Jonathan Fitch, a U.S. wind power advocate working on installing new wind turbines for the local utility in Princeton, New Jersey said to the New York Times, “We realize that not everybody will like the look of it, but it’s better than the alternative, which is pollution.”
Toronto’s 94-metre tall wind turbine is the first of its kind in an urban setting anywhere in the world. While it creates electricity that is fed into the grid, it is essentially a demonstration to attract the world’s attention to the city, while attracting local attention to the future of wind power.
“Wind power has tremendous potential as a renewable source of electricity,” says internationally known environmentalist Dr. David Suzuki. “I’m delighted that we are seeing some progress on this in Toronto...Wind power will help address climate change and bring cleaner air, with important public health benefits. Renewable energy such as wind power is the way forward.”
You don’t have to tell the Danes that. Denmark is the world leader in wind power. In fact the nation’s top export is wind turbine manufacturing. Wind energy co-operatives are a nationwide movement with more than 100,000 members. Denmark estimates that 50% of their electricity needs will come from wind by 2030.
The success in Denmark is not going unnoticed as more and more wind farms are popping up all over the world. In 1996 there was 6,000 megawatts of installed wind turbines in the world. That number rose quickly to 22,000 megawatts by 2001.
The Canadian Wind Energy Association has a “wind vision for Canada” of 10,000 megawatts on installed wind power for Canada by 2010. That might be an enthusiastic goal but there are a number of projects underway. One of the more ambitious ones is a $150 million project on top of Blue Mountain expected to supply power to 32,000 homes. Hamilton-based Superior Wind Energy Inc. has been acquiring the wind energy rights for about 1,800 hectares of land in preparation to build the wind farm. The 67 proposed turbines will be 85 metres tall (to compare, remember the one in Toronto is 94 metres tall) and will produce up to 200 megawatts of electricity.
That will certainly make at least a small dent in the Ontario government’s Green Power Standard goal requiring 8% — about 3,000 megawatts — of the province’s electricity to come from new renewable sources by 2013. The idea of a Green Power Standard, while a good one, isn’t new. No less than 13 U.S. states have what is called “renewable portfolio standard”. For example, New Jersey has required 6.5% of the state’s power will come from renewables by 2012. The U.S. also has a federal tax credit giving wind farm operators a 1.8 cent deduction from his or her federal tax bill for every kilowatt hour of electricity generated.
While the Blue Mountain project is on the horizon, the five-turbine Huron Wind project near Kincardine on the shores of Lake Huron opened officially last November. Huron Wind is comprised of five 117-metre, 1.8 megawatt wind turbines and they are generating enough electricity to power 3,000 homes.
Canada’s action on the wind front isn’t going unnoticed either and indeed, the Danish-based magazine Wind Power Monthly has a photograph of Toronto’s Windshare turbine on the front cover. Inside the magazine Canada is praised for becoming a “hotbed of activity” in wind power.
SMALL-SCALE WIND
Commercial wind power generation is on the rise but small home models are available and becoming more popular as well. There are lots of companies out there that make small-scale wind turbines and a lot of confusing information to sift through regarding which ones work best. Mick Sagrillo is a wind power expert who wrote an article in 1993 and has updated it three times since, (most recently published in the August/September 2002 issue of Home Power magazine), entitled “Apples & Oranges”. Here he compares windmills from the Whisper H40 with its 7-foot rotor diameter all the way to the Jacobs 31-20 and its 31-foot rotor diameter. And lots in between.To give a brief comparison from Sagrillo’s assessment, the Whisper H40 costs $1,495 (US) and produces 65 killowatt hours per month with an average wind speed of 10 miles/hour. The Jacobs 31-20 costs $23,500 (US) and will produce 1,644 killowatt hours per month with the same wind speeds.
Bob Budd is an ex-organic farmer, the director of Citizen’s For Responsible Energy, and gives workshops on building your own brakedrum windmill. The brakedrum windmill — designed by Hugh Spigott — sells for about $500. Budd says for that amount, with your own tools and with access to welding you can have your own windmill providing electricity for your house.
Windmills, while in some senses ideal for the Canadian environment, are not made for the urban or even the suburban resident. You need a lot of property to erect a windmill as it has to be higher than anything nearby. Many windmills are repaired on the ground meaning you need enough room to lower the tower to the ground. The windmill should be at least 30 feet above any obstruction (tree, house) within 500 feet. And the higher the better as the air higher up is cleaner with less variations.
Budd is highly supportive of those who want to integrate wind power into their electricity consumption but he decries the lack of support for the industry from government. Things are improving but he says that windmills would be more common if the government was providing tax credits to those who install renewable energy.
“We either have to get a tax credit or someone should be paying a carbon tax,” Budd stated at the Living Off The Grid workshop at the Ecology Retreat Centre earlier this year. “The world currently revolves around the oil industry. You don’t want to move the technology beyond oil until you exhaust oil; that is where we are at unfortunately. We (renewable energy producers) should at least get a tax credit. That is the reason you don’t see windmills lining the road.”
Budd also says that as with solar, people have to talk about serious conservation before they consider wind.
“On average a house in Canada uses 25 killowatt hours per day,” he said. “Our house uses 6 killowatt hours per day with p.v. (photovoltaic panels) and wind.”
TAKING STEPS FORWARD
Most who read this might not live in a rural area with enough property to install their own windmill but the possibilities for wind co-operatives such as exist in Denmark are immense. WindShare is the project that built the turbine at Exhibition Place and was developed by the Toronto Renewable Energy Co-operative (TREC), which itself was founded by a community group called North Toronto Green Community (NTGC) in 1997. By joining WindShare you become a renewable energy producer. It’s too late to get shares in the first WindShare turbine but a second one is planned for the grounds of the Ashbridges Bay Treatment Plant (Lakeshore Blvd. and Leslie St.).WindShare says that the projected dividend to shareholders in year two is $8 per $100 share. To purchase shares you have to buy one $1 membership share to be a voting member and at least five “Preference Shares” at $100 each. Each Preference Share entitles the purchaser to a share of the electricity generated or the proceeds of its sale by WindShare. There were up to 16,000 Preference Shares available in Toronto and the first 8,000 — for the Exhibition Place turbine — sold out fast. Sales continue for the second half of the offering. To find out more about how to be a shareholder in the co-op you can download an info kit from the WindShare website (www.windshare.ca).
GOVERNMENT ACTION, INACTION
The provincial government’s Energy Action Plan (EAP) released this year takes a lot of positive steps towards renewables. At the same time the government attitude as represented in the EAP is part of the problem: What should the response have been in the wake of the August 14 blackout? For Ernie Eves in Ontario, Jean Charest in Quebec, as well as for President George Bush in the U.S., the response was to increase production. If by increased production they meant wind farms or photovoltaic incentives that would be positive but mostly our governments’ are only creeping haltingly towards renewables. The step in the right direction needed according to all the experts is a massive increase in conservation, coupled with renewable energy projects and the eventual the decommissioning of nuclear and coal plants.Part of Ontario’s EAP proudly talks about the price-freezing at 4.3 cents per killowatt hour until 2006 to stabilize electricity prices while new generating capacity is built. According to many experts including Budd, that 4.3 cents is part of the problem.
“We should make the price of hydro reflective per killowatt hour,” he said. “Right now there is no incentive to go to wind because hydro is so cheap. So unless you are down to 10 killowatt hours (per day) don’t even talk about wind power.”
The 4.3 cents that Ontarians so gladly pay doesn’t come close to paying for the electricity itself, not to mention the damage done to the environment by the coal-fired plants.
With Denmark as an example and a role model we can see that wind power does work and when pushed in that direction, our governments will have to encourage renewables. As far as those who don’t like wind power because the turbines block their views: Those complaints will surely dissipate as so much hot air.
Stay tuned next month for the final part in Vitality’s Alternative Energy Series.
For more info on wind power:
• www.homepower.com (Homepower Magazine)• www.windstats.com (Wind Stats Newsletter)
• www.wpm.co.nz (Wind Power Monthly Magazine)
• www.canwea.ca (Canadian Wind Energy Association)
• www.windpower.org (Danish Wind Power)
• www.windshare.ca (WindShare)