Wind Power News: Alberta
These news and opinion items are gathered by National Wind Watch to help keep readers informed about developments related to industrial wind energy. They are the products of the organizations or individuals noted and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of National Wind Watch.
Skip big school turbine for more smaller ones, prof urges CBE
CALGARY — A wind power expert says the city’s public school board should abandon plans for a 43-metre-tall turbine in favour of smaller-scale projects, if its primary goal is educating students about renewable energy. For the $290,000 it will cost to install the tower and generator at a school in the city’s southeast, mechanical engineering professor David Wood says the Calgary Board of Education could install a dozen demonstration units, similar to the one erected at Olympic Heights School two . . .
Waste of money
Re: “Schoolyard turbine too costly,” Nov. 4. Are you kidding me? With all the financial pressures on the CBE, the best thing they can think of to spend $290,000 on is not reducing class sizes, not repairing aging, rundown facilities, not hiring more teachers, but buying a wind turbine? Oh wait, it’s a great investment, too! It will pay out in 20 years. I have a better idea. Can the project and can the people who proposed it. Rick Bawol, . . .
Expert questions economic sense of Calgary school board’s wind turbine
CALGARY — A 47-metre-high wind turbine that could soon tower over a school ground in a residential area of south Calgary makes no economic sense, according to a prominent renewable energy expert. The city’s public school board says the $290,000 machine planned for Dr. E.P. Scarlett High School would pay for itself in 20 years. But calculations done by the Herald using current market rates for electricity show it would take over three decades — longer than the turbine’s predicted . . .
Calgary residents outraged about school’s wind turbine plans
CALGARY — Some Calgary residents are outraged over a plan to install a 47-metre-tall wind turbine on a school ground, saying they were not “properly informed” of the Calgary Board of Education’s plan. While board officials defended the proposal as a learning tool for students, staff and residents, visitors to the open house at E.P. Scarlett High School accused the board officials of not being transparent. “It really aggravates me that the board doesn’t bother to notify people of these . . .
Concerns fly over wind turbine proposal
What began as a staid open house on a proposed 47-metre wind turbine slated for a school ground turned stormy Wednesday when some southwest residents demanded to know why they weren’t “properly informed” of the Calgary Board of Education’s plan and questioned how such a project will benefit the community or even the environment. While board officials defended the plan as a superior learning tool for students, staff and residents, visitors to the open house at Dr. E.P. Scarlett High . . .
Alberta’s wind power producers face energy storage challenge
Alberta’s wind power producers hope to more than double their output over the next few years, but a new economic and technical report suggests there are major challenges ahead. The key to making green energy profitable is the ability to store the energy – most likely by using excess electricity to run large air compressors that fill underground caverns with pressurized air. The pressure would then be released on demand to turn a turbine that produces electricity. Provincial wholesale power . . .
Plans advance for embattled Montana power line
HELENA, Mont. — A Canadian energy company said Tuesday that it is buying an embattled Montana power transmission line project that has seen its plans of shipping wind energy across the border become mired in landowner disputes. Alberta-based Enbridge Inc.’s announcement came the same day the company announced a significant settlement with a leader of the opposition. Enbridge’s plans to purchase Tonbridge Power Inc. – whose main business involves the Montana-Alberta Tie Line power transmission project – in a deal . . .
MATL facing issues on several fronts
The controversial MATL transmission line continues to generate news, running the gambit from table talk to a Montana Supreme Court decision. The issues stem mostly from placement of the 500-foot transmission line corridor, a process that involved the state, the public and the company through the Major Facilities Siting Act process, but the project’s complexity has created an expanded list of concerns. Chris Stephens, who has advocated for landowner rights since the MATL project was started, and whose brother, Robert, . . .
Power line slowed by cash crunch; Montana link faces $5.8M shortfall
Lack of funds has slowed action on the proposed 300-megawatt Alberta Montana Tie Line transmission line, the company behind the province’s first intertie with the U.S. said. Costs have escalated on the proposed $213 million US merchant power line, which would flow electricity from wind farms in each jurisdiction to their respective power grids, said Tonbridge Power Inc. Regulatory delays, a contentious court decision, landowner and contractor disputes have increased costs by about $25 million US on the Lethbridge to . . .
Contract dispute halts transmission line work
The construction of a cross-border transmission line between Canada and the United States has been halted pending the resolution of a dispute between Montana Alberta Tie Ltd and its contractor. “The EPC (Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) has a specific section related to permitted change orders, where the actual costs related to design changes, lack of access to land, inclement weather days in excess of twenty, changes in law, and other elements outside the control of RMC provide a basis . . .
