Construction starts on wind farm to help meet ACT's energy needs

The ACT aims to source 90 per cent of Canberra’s electricity from renewable energy by 2020. Photo: Rohan Thomson

The first wind farm to supply renewable energy to power thousands of Canberra homes is one step closer. 

Building work on the Coonooer Bridge Wind Farm near Bendigo is set to start today. 

It was one of three wind farms in Victoria and South Australia to win 20-year deals with the ACT government to supply a third of Canberra’s electricity needs within two years.

The deals are worth a total of $68 million a year to the three companies and will cost Canberra households an average $93 extra a year on their power bills at the peak in 2020. 

The farm will help the ACT meet its goal to source 90 per cent of Canberra’s electricity from renewable energy by 2020.

Environment Minister Simon Corbell said the Victorian farm would generate “the lowest-cost wind energy in Australia” at $81.50 per megawatt hour.

“Wind is currently the lowest-cost renewable energy generation available, and will play a big role in the decarbonisation of the ACTs electricity supply.

“It will contribute approximately three-quarters of the ACT’s 90 per cent renewable energy target.”

Mr Corbell said an expected annual output of 82,000 megawatt-hours would be enough to power about 12,000 homes.

The farm will be managed by wind energy development company Windlab from its global operation centre in Canberra. 

The hub was set up as part of the company’s bid for the wind auction and currently employs 15 staff, a number which should grow to 70 by 2035.

Construction of the Coonooer Bridge Wind Farm should be finished in the first half of next year. 

Construction starts on wind farm to help meet ACT"s energy needs

The Government Found a Cheap Way to Switch to Renewable Energy. Now It Needs to Use It More.

The Pentagon just announced a contract with a big-time defense contract that good-government and energy-efficiency types should cheer.

Illustration by Sofya Levina. Images by alienant/Shutterstock and Melissa Held/Shutterstock.

Big defense contracts awarded to big defense contractors are usually a big cause for concern. They tend to go over budget, often for things we don’t really need (like a certain type of fighter plane). But a couple weeks ago, the Pentagon announced a contract with a big-time defense contractor that good-government and energy-efficiency types should cheer—and demand grow more common. Honeywell Building Solutions, a unit of the conglomerate Honeywell, got a $22.4 million contract to overhaul the energy system at Rock Island Arsenal—an ancient military outpost on an island in the Mississippi River between Iowa and Illinois.

A tad boring? Maybe. But it’s an example of how the private sector can easily and cheaply be harnessed to work for the public interest, all while saving energy and cutting emissions.

Because they own so much property and consume so much energy, government agencies have a great deal to gain from upgrading their equipment with renewable technology. But in this era of sequesters, the Pentagon and its sister agencies can’t afford to buy new boilers, air conditioners, efficient light bulbs, and hybrid trucks—even though they would pay off relatively quickly in the form of lower operating costs.

Advertisement

Under a type of contracting that is growing increasingly popular, however, companies offer to install the new equipment while guaranteeing energy and monetary savings—all for no money down. The trend toward what’s known as guaranteed performance contracting started more than 30 years ago, propelled in part by Shirley Hansen’s book Schoolhouse in the Red, about maintenance issues in the educational sector. In this model, a financial institution fronts the money to do the upgrades. The contractor guarantees the work it does will produce a certain amount of savings, thus capping or even reducing the government entity’s annual energy bill. The government repays the bill for the upgrades over time (10 years, 15 years, 20 years) simply by making payments that are the same—or lower—than its existing energy bills.  

Efforts to make the federal government run more and more on sustainable energy have intensified in the last few years. A 2007 executive order by President George W. Bush called for federal facilities to reduce energy consumption by 30 percent by 2015. And in 2011, President Obama announced a $2 billion commitment to help federal buildings pursue energy savings through so-called Energy Savings Performance Contracts, a form of guaranteed performance contracting. (Here’s a good Energy Department primer on ESPCs.) In response, many agencies, including the Defense Department, set up programs to qualify private-sector firms to carry out projects. “A tremendous boost in the market came when Obama put out [the] executive challenge,” says Kevin Madden, the vice president of worldwide sales at Honeywell Buildings Systems. His company is one of 16 firms that have qualified for Energy Department work and one of 14 that has done so for Army contracts.

You can think of these efforts like a commercial version of Extreme Home Makeover. “We’re going to come in and replace all that old equipment with new, updated technology that will be more efficient and effective; provide maintenance system that keeps the uptime; and provide a better outcome around improved quality of life,” says Madden. “All for what you’re billing today.” Honeywell submits proposals for specific projects, conduct audits, and negotiates the scope of the contract. Once the work is completed, if the savings meet or exceed what has been guaranteed, the government pays the third party that financed the upgrades. “If we miss the targets, we have to make up the difference,” Madden says. Honeywell Building Systems has a high degree of confidence in the proposals it makes because it’s completed more than 5,700 such programs. (In all, according to a 2013 Department of Energy report, energy service companies like Honeywell Building Systems had estimated combined revenues of $6.4 billion.)

ESPCs can be a great way to upgrade old infrastructure. And there’s not much public infrastructure in the U.S. that is older than the Rock Island Arsenal, which has produced ammunition and guns since the 19^th century. (It also housed Confederate prisoners during the Civil War and is where Ashley Wilkes was held in Gone With the Wind.) Today, Rock Island continues to function as a garrison, and as a vital cog in the manufacturing of war material, with more than 7,500 employees.

While Rock Island’s power systems don’t date to the 19^th century, they are quite old and inefficient. So in May, Honeywell and the U.S. Army announced their deal, under which Honeywell will dismantle the garrison’s mid-20^th-century coal-fired steam plant and install new natural gas boilers in more than two dozen buildings. In addition to cutting water use by 12 percent and slashing energy consumption by 11 percent, the move will help the installation comply with stricter emissions regulations by swapping coal for cleaner-burning natural gas. “With this project, we’ll reduce our operating costs significantly while also lowering our environmental impact by eliminating our reliance on coal as a heating source,” Col. Elmer Speights Jr., commander of the Rock Island Arsenal Garrison, said in a press release. Honeywell will get $22.4 million from a lender to do the work, and the government will pay back those funds over a 15-year period by making payments that are equal to or lower than what it costs to run the steam plant.

That’s not the only work Honeywell is doing for the Army on Rock Island. Last year, in January, the two parties agreed a $61 million deal to upgrade the systems at Rock Island Arsenal Joint Manufacturing Technology Center, the arms factory that accounts for about two-thirds of Rock Island’s overall energy use. Under a 20-year ESPC, Honeywell will install new heating and air-conditioning systems, as well as put in equipment that will make the painting systems more efficient. Says Madden: “When we combine all the work we’re doing, electricity use at Rock Island will be down 35 percent, and water consumption will be down 30 percent.” The parties say the work could result in savings of up to $5.3 million per year.

Yes, some people are making money off these arrangements. And in theory, the U.S. government, which borrows money for close to nothing, could engage in such efforts for even cheaper if it were to finance the projects itself.

But to paraphrase a former defense secretary: You go to war against energy inefficiency with the contracting procedures you have, not with the ones you wish you had.

The Government Found a Cheap Way to Switch to Renewable Energy. Now It Needs to Use It More.

Fedeli says North Bay needs a champion in wind farm fight

Tuesday, March 24, 2015   by: Liam Berti

Nipissing MPP Vic Fedeli held a town hall meeting regarding wind power generation at the Davedi Club on Tuesday night, where a crowd of over 100 listened to the impact of wind farms based on facts from the Auditor General of Canada. PHOTO BY LIAM BERTI

If North Bayites are as passionately opposed to wind farms as Nipissing MPP Vic Fedeli is, they are going to need a local champion.

Fedeli hosted a town hall meeting at the Davedi Club on Tuesday night, where he told the audience of over 100 people why they should oppose wind energy generation. 

With Innergex Renewable Energy proposing a project just north of city boundaries in Merrick Township, Fedeli felt it was time to present the facts about wind farms in Ontario.

“In Southern Ontario, this is discussed on a daily basis because they are so prevalent, but this is the first time it has come up our way, so it’s new discussion,” he said. “They are running out of places who will accept these wind turbines, so we are fresh meat, new territory.

“Find a champion who will give you the facts and figures and will walk you through how to attack this, how to fight it, how to delay it and ultimately cancel it,” he added. “These developers will do and say anything to convince you that this is a good thing.”

Fedeli quoted previous Auditor General reports to tell the audience that he thinks the provincial Green Energy Act is an empty, ideologically driven mistake. 

Despite spending some $50 billion on lucrative subsidies and long-term fixed contracts with the green energy companies, renewable energy sources continue to provide the province with just 25 per cent of their power he said.

What’s more, the province has paid more than $2.6 billion to export excess energy to the United States and Quebec since 2006.

But most importantly for Ontario ratepayers, Fedeli said hydro rates are expected to soar thanks to costs of exporting Ontario’s extra energy, paying the wind developers regardless of if the energy is needed or not.

“There’s nothing green about this Green Energy Act,” he said simply. “We still make the same amount of green energy that we made $50 billion ago, the Auditor General has told us it’s bad for the economy, and it cost us 300,000 manufacturing jobs in Ontario.”

Despite Ontario already having some of the highest industrial hydro rates in North America, Fedeli said rates are forecasted to increase by up to 42 per cent in the next three years.

Those rates, he said, have chased some big, high-consumption industrial players out of the province because their hydro bills were too high.

Guests Warren Howard of Wind Concerns Ontario and Raymond Beaudry of the Manitoulin Coalition for Safe Energy Alternatives backed him up with anecdotal support as well. 

Beaudry, in particular, said that economically, the imminent increases on hydro bills are going to outstrip everyone’s ability to pay and, ultimately, bring the wind power projects down. 

Some of the members in the audience said they have witnessed the negative impacts of wind farm projects elsewhere in the province, like Lake Erie, Manitoulin Island, Huron County, and Port Dover.

In the end though, the trio of presenters emphasized that, while the municipalities have little power in preventing the projects, it’s up to the community to rally against them and make the statement themselves.

“You are going to have to start fighting it now,” said Howard.

The Merrick Township Wind Farm Proposal

While Fedeli said he didn’t host the town hall meeting to address any specific projects or companies directly, those in attendance were clearly gearing up for the one that’s expected to hit close to home.

Innergex Renewable Energy, the Quebec-based company proposing the industrial turbine system for Merrick Township, had the preliminary plan to erect a 50-60 turbine wind farm in one of the flight corridors of Jack Garland Airport in the unorganized Merrick Township.

But after the Mayor and City Council submitted a letter of opposition to the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change objecting the wind farm, Innergex met with Mayor McDonald and airport representatives last week to resolve their early concerns.

Chief among them was the threat to their heavy investment in the Airport Industrial Park.

But François Morin, the senior advisor of public affairs for Innergex, who was in attendance for Fedeli’s meeting on Tuesday, said the company has already addressed the city’s concerns by proposing the turbines be outside a 15-kilometre area from the airport.

He said they are now in the process of developing a sound proposal that they are confident will come to fruition with social acceptability.

“It was a good, positive first meeting and we have clarified many things, so it was a constructive meeting,” said Morin. “The city will be careful to question and be sure that we bring something to the community, but I think we share the same objective.

“Yes, there will be short-term jobs; but it’s 300 jobs against zero jobs without the project,” Morin added. “They just want to be sure that if we build a project that we don’t cause problems and there will be a positive contribution to the community.”

After the strong opposition to the proposed wind farm for the Mattawa area, Innergex pulled the plug on their proposal. But the Merrick project remains in the early planning stages for now.

Morin said he and Innergex are more confident in the Merrick project and plan on hosting public meetings in the coming months. 

“Now we will have the meetings and answer the concerns one-on-one, but there will also be public meetings and consultations, but only once we know we have a better project,” he said.

Some of the early issues from area residents, he said, revolve around environmental and health concerns.

“I heard many stories tonight that are not related to what we do at all,” said Morin. “We have 25 years of experience in developing projects with 33 facilities all over North America, and we have a spotless record when it comes to environment and we intend to keep it that way.”

While Tuesday’s meeting was scheduled well before the Mattawa project was called off, Fedeli said it’s a good opportunity to keep the momentum rolling. 

“It’s my role as an MPP to bring the facts from Queen’s Park for all groups,” he said. “After the Mattawa victory, it was important to carry on.”

What do you think? Do industrial wind turbines belong close to North Bay? Why or why not?

Note: Comments that appear on the site are not the opinion of BayToday.ca. Keep discussions civil and on topic. Refrain from obscenity and don’t post anything that your grandmother would be ashamed to read.

Fedeli says North Bay needs a champion in wind farm fight

Gattie: US needs multifacted approach to energy issues

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s recently proposed carbon rules for power plants are the lightning rod for climate change discussions and, if implemented, will mandate changes for U.S. power generation.

Supporters laud EPA for taking action on climate issues by way of imposing change on the power generation industry.

Detractors maintain that EPA’s rules are illegal and costly, and will impact reliability. While there is broad agreement that carbon dioxide must be reduced, the issue of fossil fuels versus renewable energy, particularly solar and wind, is often divisive.

Renewables are championed as limitless resources. For example, solar energy is ubiquitous and the daily amount reaching Earth is much more than society can consume. A similar statement could be made about water and the vast amounts stored in oceans, except the issue isn’t quantity — it’s quality. Solar and wind are also inherently intermittent, which presents challenges for matching fluctuating supplies with on-demand consumer needs. Converting solar and wind energy to high-quality electricity for supporting an entire state is a material-intense prospect that would require physical space, back-up storage capacity and a rigorous state-level analysis to assess land space, material needs, and economic viability. In contrast, fossil fuels are high-quality energy resources with no intermittency problems, but with inherent carbon issues that require mitigation.

If we had an environmentally green magic wand, we could wave it at renewables and eliminate any low quality and intermittency issues, or wave it at fossil fuels and eliminate the emissions. We wouldn’t need to wave it at nuclear energy — it has none of these issues.

Absent the wand, we’re left with developing a practical strategy constrained by realistic short- and long-term concerns for climate and our economy. As such, the oft-restrained “all-the-above” energy strategy transitions from cliche to necessity.

Currently, carbon capture and storage technologies are being developed, with one of the largest under construction in Mississippi. Successful implementation will allow continued use of abundant U.S. coal and natural gas resources without the current emissions issues.

Nuclear energy is being re-established, with new units under construction in Georgia, Tennessee and South Carolina.

Large-scale energy storage, which is fundamentally necessary to support efficient deployment of renewables at large scales, is maturing.

A premise of EPA’s rule is that it will provide a global example of U.S. commitment to climate change action and induce other countries to take similar actions.

However, CCS, nuclear, and energy storage innovations are a stronger example, as they hold promise for directly reducing emissions near-term when transferred to other countries, and they represent a broad, vested commitment to climate action as U.S. industry innovates and assumes the financial risks itself.

Carbon emission is a critical issue that we must confront. However, it isn’t one-dimensional. There are valid concerns that mandating change in a vital U.S. industrial sector has inherent economic risks and that EPA’s rule will not persuade other countries to substantively reduce their own emissions. The integrity of the polar ice caps is a particular concern, but unilateral efforts through EPA’s rule will have negligible impact in that regard.

Considered individually, neither fossil fuels nor renewables can meet the formidable environmental and economic objectives we face today, so we don’t have the luxury of choosing either-or.

However, a diverse energy supply based on CCS, nuclear and renewables is up to this challenge. The United States should aggressively develop CCS technology to support safe, responsible use of coal and natural gas, should promote and develop nuclear for its carbon-free and reliability characteristics, and should judiciously develop renewables and companion energy storage technologies for efficient, geographically appropriate integration into our power generation and distribution systems.

The EPA’s rules are weighted toward environmental concerns, while the economic aspects can only be assumed.

For Georgia, where utility-sector CO2 emissions have been reduced 28 percent since 2001, the rules may force premature and costly changes, such as the conversion of existing coal plants to gas, construction of new gas plants, or incorporation of renewables without sufficient time to optimize the economics.

Germany and Spain are currently experiencing unexpected consequences of large-scale, aggressive deployment of highly subsidized renewable resources. We should learn from such examples before we force changes into our own debt-laden $16 trillion economy, which cannot afford the risks of a large-scale experiment on its capacity to generate and distribute clean, reliable and affordable electricity. Neither our climate nor our economy can afford mistakes at that scale.

David Gattie is an associate professor of environmental engineering at the University of Georgia. The views expressed here are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Georgia, the University System of Georgia, or the University System Board of Regents. Send email to dgattie@gmail.com.

Gattie: US needs multifacted approach to energy issues

New silent wind turbine could generate half of a homes electric needs, says company The ...

Megan Treacy of Treehugger reports Silent rooftop wind turbines could generate half of a household’s energy needs

A Dutch company cased The Archimedes has developed a small, highly efficient, and silent rooftop wind energy generator called the Liam1, which it claims could generate half the power a typical house would need, and which they say would be ideal for combining with solar rooftop PV panels.

The company states that the Liam F1 turbine could generate 1,500 kWh of energy at wind speeds of 5m/s, enough to cover half of an average household’s energy use. … When used in combination with rooftop solar panels, a house could run off grid. “When there is wind you use the energy produced by the wind turbine; when the sun is shining you use the solar cells to produce the energy,” The Archimedes CEO Richard Ruijtenbeek said.

The Liam’s blades are shaped like a Nautilus shell. The design allows it to point into the wind to capture the most amount of energy, while also producing very little sound. The inventor of the turbine Marinus Mieremet says that the power output is 80 percent of the theoretical maximum energy that could be harnessed from the wind.

“Generally speaking, there is a difference in pressure in front and behind of the rotor blades of a windmill. However, this is not the case with the Liam F1. The difference in pressure is created by the spatial figure in the spiral blade. This results in a much better performance. Even when the wind is blowing at an angle of 60 degrees into the rotor, it will start to spin. We do not require expensive software: because of its conical shape, the wind turbine yaws itself automatically into the optimal wind direction. Just like a wind vane. And because the wind turbine encounters minimal resistance, he is virtually silent,” said Mieremet.

The Archimedes is now working on an even smaller turbine that could fit on top of lamposts, boats, and smaller applications.

With the announcement today of the EPA’s proposed new standards for reducing carbon emissions, we have all the more reason to look to renewable energy options to supply our energy needs.

Here is a link to the embedded video below that the company offers to explain the history of the Liam1 turbine. The Archimedes windmill movie ENG high quality

New silent wind turbine could generate half of a homes electric needs, says company The ...

Vestas Wind Needs to 'Crack the Code of China,' Chairman Says

Vestas Wind Systems A/S (VWS) wants to gain market share in China, where almost half of last year’s new wind turbines were installed, Chairman Bert Nordberg said.

The Danish wind turbine manufacturer, the world’s biggest, wants to be the “indisputable global leader,” Nordberg said late yesterday in an interview from Aarhus. He identified South Africa, Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines as markets where the company is weak and can take market share, and he said China also represents a challenge.

“We need to crack the code of China,” Nordberg said. “We’re pretty weak in China, but we have to make money. Otherwise there’s no use in doing the business.”

China is attractive because more than a quarter of global wind capacity is installed there and it took 45 percent of last year’s market. At the same time, foreign manufacturers have struggled to grab share due to low prices and competition from domestic companies. That’s changing, said Justin Wu, a wind power analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance in Hong Kong.

“The Chinese wind market is quite different now than it was a couple of years ago — it’s maturing a lot,” Wu said in a phone interview. Developers are “caring more about quality and project performance now. It’s not all about up-front costs.”

Even so, turbines are selling in China for about 500,000 euros ($690,000) to 600,000 euros a megawatt, compared to 900,000 euros outside China, Wu said. That’s made it hard for Western manufacturers such as Vestas, General Electric Co. and Gamesa Corp. Tecnologica SA to grab share.

Chinese Share

Vestas was the top-ranked foreign turbine maker in the Chinese market last year, Wu said, citing Chinese Wind Energy Association figures. The Danish turbine maker came 11th, taking 3.2 percent of the market, while Gamesa came 16th and GE 19th. Both had less than 2 percent. China’s Xinjiang Goldwind Science & Technology Co., Guodian United Power Technology Co. and China Ming Yang Wind Power Group had the biggest shares.

Vestas has installed close to 1-in-5 of the world’s wind turbines, a proportion that drops to lower than 1-in-20 in China, where it has installed 4,312 megawatts of machines. China had about 91,000 megawatts of turbines at the end of 2013, or 29 percent of the world’s 318,000 megawatts according to figures last month from the Global Wind Energy Council.

China installed 16,100 megawatts last year, 45 percent of the global total of 35,500 megawatts and five times the next biggest market, Germany.

At the end of last year, Vestas had three turbines totaling 6 megawatts erected in Vietnam and 20 devices totaling 33 megawatts in the Philippines, according to company figures. It last installed machines in those nations in 2011 and 2008. In Thailand, it’s only ever installed one machine, rated at less than a megawatt, in 1996.

“Vietnam, Thailand and Philippines are good markets with good winds and ideas to grow,” Nordberg said. “There are a number of markets where we will invest to gain market share.”

In South Africa, another market identified by Nordberg as a growth target, the Danish manufacturer has installed 39 devices totaling 69 megawatts.

To contact the reporter on this story: Alex Morales in London at amorales2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Reed Landberg at landberg@bloomberg.net Alex Devine

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you’re reading it on someone else’s site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php#publishers.

Vestas Wind Needs to "Crack the Code of China," Chairman Says