Ontario has so far approved thousands of green energy contracts, ranging in size from a few solar panels on the roof of a family home to industrial-scale projects, in which they agree to pay several times the going electricity rate for periods of up to 40 years. It has also signed a controversial $7-billion deal with a consortium led by South Korean giant Samsung that includes a massive investment in wind and solar electricity. The hope is that all the spending will seed a new green energy industry in Ontario (all projects must source a percentage of materials locally), creating some 50,000 new jobs in the process.
Category Archives: Wind power
Plans announced for Lake Erie wind farm
General Electric Co. announced Monday that it plans to harness the power of winds blowing across Lake Erie by developing the world’s first freshwater wind farm several miles offshore from downtown Cleveland.
GE and the nonprofit Lake Erie Energy Development Corp., or LEEDCo, announced a partnership to develop five wind turbines about 6 miles north of Cleveland Browns stadium. The turbines, which would stand about 200 feet tall, would aim to generate about 20 megawatts of power by 2012 and 1,000 megawatts by 2020.
The announcement came weeks after the Obama administration cleared the way for America’s first offshore wind farm in Massachusetts. In late April, U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar approved a $2 billion Cape Wind project off the shores of Cape Cod after more than eight years of lawsuits and government reviews.
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Tim Hudak Calls For Municipalities to Have a Say on Industrial Wind Farms
Tim Hudak and the Ontario PC Caucus will introduce a motion in the Ontario Legislature today calling on the McGuinty Government to restore planning authority to Ontario municipalities so that no industrial wind farm can be imposed on a community that does not want one.
Dalton McGuinty’s so-called ‘Green Energy Act’ allows the Toronto based energy bureaucrats at the Ontario Power Authority to arbitrarily place industrial wind farms anywhere in Ontario regardless of the views of the democratically elected local governments.
Municipalities across Ontario have expressed economic and environmental concerns about the wind farms that are being forced upon them under Dalton McGuinty’s so-called ‘Green Energy Act’.
Ontario PC Leader Tim Hudak is calling on all Liberal Government members to support the motion and give back municipal governments’ ability to decide what is best for their own community.
Quotes:
“Dalton McGuinty’s so-called ‘Green Energy’ scheme will force Ontario families to pay more for industrial wind farms over which they have no control. This has little to do with the environment and everything to do with rewarding Dalton McGuinty’s friends at Samsung.”
— Ontario PC Leader Tim Hudak
“If Dalton McGuinty’s plan for placing industrial wind farms in the backyards of Ontario communities was as popular as he pretends it is, he should not be afraid of supporting our PC motion and, once again, allowing Ontario municipalities to have their say.”
— Ontario PC Leader Tim Hudak
Quick Facts:
– Schedule A of the Green Energy Act empowers the McGuinty Government
to overrule municipal by-laws and local concerns when locating
industrial wind farms.
– Municipalities across Ontario have passed resolutions expressing
significant concerns regarding the economic and environmental impact
of industrial wind turbine technology being forced on them through
the ‘Green Energy Act’.
For further information: Christine Bujold, (416) 325-1330, christine.bujold@pc.ola.org
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Wind power has boomed in the UK because of the subsidy system under which consumers pay roughly double the normal price for energy
THE first detailed study of Britain’s onshore wind farms suggests some treasured landscapes may have been blighted for only small gains in green energy.
The analysis reveals that more than 20 wind farms produce less than a fifth of their potential maximum power output.
One site, at Blyth Harbour in Northumberland, is thought to be the worst in Britain, operating at just 7.9% of its maximum capacity. Another at Chelker reservoir in North Yorkshire operates at only 8.7% of capacity.
Both are relatively small and old, but larger and newer sites fared badly, too, according to analyses of data released by Ofgem, the energy regulator, for 2008.
And to find out how poorly Ontario wind farms perform on any given day, visit here
See also Wind power is unreliable, expensive and doesn’t result in lower CO2 emmissions
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Despite bubbles, governments keep pumping air into alternative energy
While investment analysts are telling their clients to get out of solar power firms and warning about the continuing risks in wind and bioenergy schemes, Ottawa and the provinces are on a mad populist stampede to throw billions of dollars at the green energy monster. The politicians don’t seem to be keeping up with the trends. “Don’t try to catch a falling knife,” warned J.P. Morgan this week in a report that told investors the market continues to fall out of the solar panel module market. It downgraded a bunch of solar companies that have already been in a tailspin since the fist signs of a solar crash back in 2008.
Other alternative energy sectors are hitting walls. Jurisdictions with wind power regimes face continuing issues related to the fact that the wind often doesn’t blow much, turning investments in wind farms into cash-draining albatrosses. In Ontario, the 1,100 megawatts of built wind turbine capacity are often running a few megawatts at a time, and even on the best of days have trouble producing 150 megawatts.
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Wind power is unreliable, expensive and doesn’t result in lower C02 emmissions. Why is Ontario still rushing ahead with it?
Erie Shores Wind Farm
In October 2007, the Ontario Power Authority (OPA) — the government’s own agency, tasked with planning Ontario’s power system and now entering into long-term contracts with renewable energy producers — published its Integrated Power System Plan, where it analyzed a “high wind power” scenario for the province, and concluded: “Since wind generation has an effective capacity of 20% compared to 73% for hydroelectric generation, additional generation capacity with better load-following characteristics would need to be installed.
“This needed capacity will likely have to be obtained by installing additional gas-fired generation. Thus, in addition to incurring further capital costs for the gas generation installation, higher gas usage would be expected to make up for the reduced amount of renewable energy from wind compared to that from hydroelectric generation or this alternative. Therefore, this alternative would result in higher greenhouse gas emissions.” The OPA concluded: “Wind and solar power will never be more than a niche supplier of power in Ontario.”
For an hour-by-hour comparison of generator output and capability, visit the IESO website. Scroll down to wind total. In particular for Elgin county, follow the meagre output from the Erie Shores Wind Farm near Port Burwell.
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Will Canada’s wind turbines invade lakes?
A proposal to put 700 wind turbines along the shores of Lakes St. Clair and Erie, each about as tall as a 40-story building, is provoking controversy in Canada and the U.S.
The turbines, planted on the lake bottom and arranged in grids jutting more than 3 miles out into the lakes, easily would be seen from the marinas and mansions of the Grosse Pointes, as well as from Rockwood, Gibraltar and Grosse Ile.
Some residents on both sides of the border are worried about how the windmills would affect shoreline property values, fishing, boating and bird migration. The turbines would be on major migratory pathways for birds at several major wildlife refuges, including Point Pelee, Ontario, and the Detroit International Wildlife Refuge.
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700 wind turbines proposed for lakes Erie, St. Clair
Seven hundred offshore wind turbines are being proposed for Lake Erie and Lake St. Clair including 165 turbines north of Lakeshore and wind farms off Amherstburg, Colchester, Kingsville and Leamington.
SouthPoint Wind of Leamington had already proposed 15 turbines in three spots off the shores of Kingsville and Leamington. If SouthPoint gets approval for that project, it is proposing a 1,400 megawatt project with 13 wind farms: three in Lake St. Clair and the rest south of Essex County and Chatham-Kent in Lake Erie. Each wind farm could have 55 turbines and could be one to 2.5 kilometres from shore.
“Why should we be the guinea pigs?” Leamington Deputy Mayor Rob Schmidt said Wednesday.
If it could be the first offshore wind farm anywhere in fresh water, there should be more research done, Schmidt said.
There are offshore wind farms proposed on the Great Lakes including Lake Ontario but none approved or constructed in the province.
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Wind Energy’s Ghosts – a warning about the perils of wind power.
Wiwo…wiwo…wiwo.
The sound floats on the winds of Ka Le, this southernmost tip of Hawaii’s Big Island, where Polynesian colonists first landed some 1,500 years ago.
Some say that Ka Le is haunted — and it is. But it’s haunted not by Hawaii’s legendary night marchers. The mysterious sounds are “Na leo o Kamaoa”– the disembodied voices of 37 skeletal wind turbines abandoned to rust on the hundred-acre site of the former Kamaoa Wind Farm.
The voices of Kamaoa cry out their warning as a new batch of colonists, having looted the taxpayers of Spain, Portugal, and Greece, seeks to expand upon their multi-billion-dollar foothold half a world away on the shores of the distant Potomac River. European wind developers are fleeing the EU’s expiring wind subsidies, shuttering factories, laying off workers, and leaving billions of Euros of sovereign debt and a continent-wide financial crisis in their wake. But their game is not over. Already they are tapping a new vein of lucre from the taxpayers and ratepayers of the United States.
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