Wind Blog

The European Wind Energy Association released statistics on newly installed wind in 2009. The number demonstrates clearly that other sources of generation are threatened by wind.
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I have been catching up on some reading of wind publications, and came across an interesting article in WindSight. The article is titled “System Operators find Integration Solutions”.
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With the New Year upon us, I thought I would reflect on the state of the world. It is sometimes easy to get discouraged. The climate denial machine, funded by fossil fuel lobbies, continues to have more ink than they deserve. Copenhagen collapsed in disarray – it’s a wonder our species has made it this far. The anti wind crowd, for the benefit of few – the fossil and nuclear business – continues to make noise, and fabricate no end of misinformation to scare people and divide communities. But what is happening on the ground?
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Prime Minister Stephen Harper finally agreed to go to the Copenhagen conference on climate change. After calling climate science a “socialist plot”, and working diligently as a friend and ally of George Bush’s America, he has reluctantly agreed to engage. But Canada’s role appears to be one of deal breaker. The government has done very little on the climate file, and is allowing its only programs that do something about it to run out of funds. Meanwhile, emissions, which were to have declined by 6%, have risen by 26%. Canada has not honoured, and worse, has not even tried to honour its treaty obligations. Read the rest of this entry »

Recent reports from Spain indicated that a record amount of wind was integrated into the grid. Wind supplied 53% of total demand on November 8th.
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A recent report caught my attention. There is a proposal for a large natural gas generating station in Oakville Ontario. Read the rest of this entry »

An upgraded transmission line to Quebec has just been completed. From Hydro One: “Monday October 19th
at 2 p.m. the A41T and A42T (Hawthorne x Outaouais) circuits were declared ready for full commercial
transactions between Ontario and Quebec. This brings the full interconnection capacity to 1200 MW.”
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Many people in my community depend on tourism for their livelihood. So naturally, opponents of wind energy like to claim that a wind farm will drive tourists away. But is this really true?
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Wind power cannot be considered in isolation from other sources of power. It is not a question wind, or no wind. It is a question of wind, or something else. And the relative impacts of the various alternative sources of power is an important consideration.
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Doug and Tracy Rogers are landowners on a 6 turbine wind farm my firm owns on southern Lake Huron. They also own a cottage on the Bruce Peninsula, and have watched the discussions about wind in the Bruce Peninsula Press with some puzzlement. After all, they live near wind turbines, and are quite happy they do. The experience of a real landowner will be useful to our understanding of the possibilities offered by wind.
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