The Telegram reported on Saturday that the provincial government’s energy company isn’t really interested in developing wind energy until after they get the hugely expensive Lower Churchill up and running.
Oh yes, and they also want to sell power to Ontario some day in the misty future despite the crowd up along having a bit of a glut of power.
Regulars readers of these e-scribblers will find the first one to be a gobsmacking revelation of the magnitude of finding out that Liberace was gay.
The second one’s just funny because it really a case of Nalcor putting a very brave face on a very badly bungled job. After all, they rejected flatly Ontario’s interest in building the project five years ago.
Then after another five years of trying desperately to interest Ontario, Quebec and anyone in northeastern North America with a electric socket in the power they came up with nothing other than this brilliant plan:
- make the people of Newfoundland and Labrador bear the entire cost of the project and,
- let Nova Scotians get 35 terawatt years of electricity for free.
And it is funny.
Your humble e-scribbler doesn’t relish the thought of the New Brunswick- like electricity prices that are headed to consumers on the island – guaranteed to at least double within the decade – and the extra burden of hauling around all that public debt but what else can you do but laugh?
If you didn’t laugh at the sheer stupidity of the idea, you go completely off your nut.
Heck, you might even believe that the Conservatives were seriously interested in sound management of the province’s finances.
Right.
Laughter it is, then.
- srbp -
5 comments:
The Telegram story also says that the Canadian Wind Energy Association agrees that Lower Churchill ought to be the priority for two reasons.
1. Wind power needs the hydro infrastructure.
2. Wind and hydro are the best pairing because wind augments hydro but cannot replace it. (the story doesn't explain why this is but I assume it is because hydro generation has a predictable output. You can store the water's potential in a reservoir but you can't store wind.)
So if Lower Churchill makes no economic sense as proposed and if we assume that HQ will take all Labrador hydro and wind power on equitable terms, then that looks after Labrador wind power but what about wind power from the island? How does that get to a market without the all that very expensive subsea infrastructure?
Additionally without predictable generation levels, how could you sell it when the purchasers would never be able to know how much power was coming at any given time.
I'm no hydro electrical engineer and I really don't know if the Lower Churchill project, as proposed, is sensible, a load of rubbish or somewhere in between. But it does seem to be sensible to say that there is no point talking about exporting island wind power until there is a viable hydro project for it to piggyback on.
That's an interesting set of observations, Ward, if only because of the extensive list of ifs you toss in there in order to get somewhere that isn't clear.
Even as an isolated system, the island can use wind as a means of displacing Holyrood power. The hydro it would need is already here in such abundance that we don't need and wont need the Lower Churchill to supply power on the island. If we wanted to export island power, we could build a line to Nova Scotia for the princely sum of $1.2 billion, apparently. That is far cheaper than the line from the LC to St. John's.
In other words, if the provincial government opened the market to competition and innovation we could already be well down the road to developing wind, connecting to the mainland (if need be) and displacing Holyrood.
At the same time, if and when the market conditions support the LC, that can come along.
As for reliability, if you go back and check you'll see some work that has been done to integrate a series of wind farms across wide geographic areas. This eliminates the problem of intermittent supply from only one or two sources (as Nalcor currently has on the island)
All the rationales you've offered and Nalcor offered just don't hold up.
First, who is Ward?
Second, if I understand you correctly ...
Leaving export aside, wind power on the island can replace Holyrood by using a network of wind farms because it is never calm everywhere. Can you point me to where I can get more information on this.
How many farms would be needed to guarantee that Holyrood could be fully displaced even on calmer days? Does Holyrood need to be fully displaced or is there enough unused hydro capacity to pick up the slack on calmer days? How much would the wind farms cost and can the current grids handle the wind production? What would be the cost to consumers if wind was used to displace Holyrood?
It's amazing the lengths that Dancor has gone to stifle economic and technological innovation in the energy industry in the name of... what? political vanity?
It's even amazinger the lengths to which the local chattering classes have gone to look the other way as this has gone on.
There's lots of information readily available online.
1. You can find a decent article on interconnection of wind farms here: interconnection. There's a link to a study done recently in Delaware.
2. As for displacing Holyrood with other non-LC sources, you need to look basically at all government sources including one of the hydro documents Kathy Dunderdale referred to when the Muskrat Falls project was announced (it wasn't a strategy and I don't have a link close to hand. There might be one on the gov site but I'll have to look it up.)
Currently and for the near term (out to about 2015 to 2010), the island is flush with power, thanks to the closure of all but one of the islands paper machines. Even with the VB smelter online the existing supply system is well able to handle the demand.
The demand forecasts are for very slow, almost negligible growth any of which could be met with conservation, small hydro (like Star Lake), wind projects and upgrading of existing hydro plants to squeeze more juice.
And in any scenario, no one is actually closing Holyrood. Nalcor plans to refurbish it and use it as a back-up as well as a generator to balance the load on the line from Muskrat. It will be running, if memory serves, 24/7/365 at something like 30% capacity.
There is a great deal of info, incidentally in the Nalcor enviro submissions on the Lower Churchill and on Nalcor's website (although you may have to dig around for it.)
The key seems to be not to get fixated on one source: the island can meet current and anticipated demand with a combination of alternatives. Until Nalcor actually releases all the information it is using to back up the political argument for the Lower Churchill, I'd take any claims about costing in favour of the LC with a huge grain of salt.
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