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UK wind turbine firm eyes Amaranth
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Hard on the heels of an Ontario Power Authority report saying provincewide energy demands will rise of the equivalent output of two nuclear plants in the next few years, another company is looking to the winds of Dufferin for green energy production.
Helen Plawman, the Canadian manager of United Kingdom-based Wind Prospect Company, said Tuesday she’ll be applying for rezoning of a site on the north side of 5 Sideroad, Amaranth, between the Sixth and Seventh Lines to allow construction of a meteorological tower to test the wind over about the next two or three years.
That application will be made at the regular council meeting on Sept. 20 at 8 p.m., she said. If the tower is permitted, a feasibility study is satisfactory, and final zoning is approved, the proposal would be for between six and 12 turbines, of nameplate capacity between 2 and 3 megawatts.
In the meantime, the Approvals Branch of the Ministry of Environment had not returned calls about the status of the Environmental Screening Report for 88 additional turbines for the Melancthon Wind Plant.
The OPA study, meantime, is predicting approximately between a 1.5 and 2 per cent exponential growth in energy demand in future years. The report, available on the OPA website, is actually dated Sept. 14, although it had been posted Monday. The increase is partially
attributed to an expanding population, but also to trends toward larger homes after 1990, as well as to a growth in the number of “gadgets” in use.
Almost everything from the smallest iPod to computers and large appliances requires electrical energy, whether that be to run the appliance or to recharge batteries.
According to the report, the growth in commercial demands outstrips the residential. And then there is a trend to hybrid automobiles.
Oddly, perhaps, the decrease in demand by energy-efficient appliances does not offset the new demands from other things.
As examples of the decline, total energy use by refrigerators declined
by 4.7 per cent annually between 1990 and 2003, for a total reduction of 88.1 per cent over the 13 years.
In the same period, freezer demands declined by 6.1 per cent yearly, dishwashers by 2.3 per cent, clothes washers by 2.1, and dryers by 1.3 per cent.
Even kitchen stoves showed a slight reduction in demand: 0.1 per cent per annum.
The provincial government and the OPA are calling for a power-general mix, with a new emphasis on “green” sources such as wind, water and solar.
Projects such as proposed by Wind Prospect are under a special program for generation capacity of 10 megawatts or less, to be fed directly into local power lines.
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