Power outage planned as part of process to bring wind turbines online
SUMMERSIDE – Turbines at the St. Eleanors wind farm could be churning out power as early as next week.
There will be a citywide power outage on Thursday morning from 2 a.m. to 6:30 a.m. to bring the system on line, according to Summerside Chief Administrative Officer Terry Murphy.
“It is a big job,” Murphy said.
“If everything goes okay . . . we’re hoping to have everything completed in the morning. If not, we’ll be continuing on with it through the week, not with shutdowns but with testing and then we’ll start up in the New Year.”
Work Thursday will involve connections between the wind farm where the distribution line comes into the Ottawa Street substation, as well as getting controls ready in the substation. As well, the tie-in between Maritime Electric and the substation will be dealt with.
Murphy’s optimistic it can all be brought together this week. Crews will be ensuring all protocols required for the safe operation of the substation are in place and working before any power is generated.
“It’s a big job and there are a lot of controls that have to be set and tested – we’ll start bringing the wind mills on after that. It will probably take about a day a wind mill to get it started.”
Murphy said once they are operating, all the energy will be delivered to the Summerside Electric Utility.
“We take all the energy that we can use at any point in time and then the rest we would sell to New Brunswick Power.”
MIKE CARSON
The Journal Pioneer
16 December 2009
Tags: Wind power, Wind energy
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