BR3 Offline, SD5 Online; Sprott Power NS Fully Operational; China’s First Canadian Wind Farm
Battle River#3 went offline at 13:46 and Sundance#5 came back online at 01:04 this morning.
Sprott Power’s $61-million wind farm near Amherst is fully operational. The last of 15 turbines went online by Tuesday this week and the wind project has already generated approximately three gigawatt hours of electricity. The project began generating electricity on March 26 when the first turbine was commissioned. Sprott Power is continuing to prepare for a potential expansion to the east side of the Trans-Canada Highway. It is preparing a submission to the latest request for proposals for renewable energy and is hoping to hear something back later this year. If it is successful, Sprott Power could begin construction next summer. It has yet to determine how many turbines it’s planning and where they will be located.
The Dufferin Wind Farm, located in Ontario, Canada, is being developed by Longyuan Canada Renewables Ltd., a subsidiary of China Long Yuan Power Generation, China’s largest wind power developer. The wind project will add 100MW to the region’s electricity grid. CLYPG will be the first customer in Ontario to receive GE’s 1.6-100 wind turbine, which features a 100-meter rotor diameter. The 1.6-100 wind turbine offers a 47% increase in swept area, which results in a 19% increase in annual energy production (AEP) at 7.5 m/s, compared to the previous 1.6-82.5 model.
Read MoreSD#4 Online SD#5 Offline; Lancaster Develops Battery; New Canada Wind Record 2012
Sundance#4 came back online at 10:25, Sheerness#1 went offline from 14:39 to 18:06, and Sundance#5 went offline at 15:16. AESO price for HE16 was 801.43 and HE 16 $574.80.
Lancaster Wind Systems Inc of Leduc Alberta, a privately held battery manufacturer, started as a hybrid propulsion system for the commercial shipping industry. The company’s 6.5 kilowatt per hour (kWh) batteries cost about $10,000 and can be packaged together to create multiple megawatt packs. Being able to store the electricity generated from a photovoltaic solar panel or from a wind turbine would allow the energy to be kept until it can be sold during peak demand. In addition, since the sun isn’t always shining and the wind isn’t always blowing, saving the electricity for when it’s needed would mean developers could potentially build smaller wind farms or solar arrays. Battery-based systems tend to cost more, but if you don’t have power lines you need to put batteries in. The apparatus is designed to allow for base-load generation from a limited number of wind turbines. Batteries and compressed air storage are promising especially as advances in lithium-ion technology make the former that much cheaper. Canada as a whole is an unlikely home for natural energy storage because the country is awash in hydroelectricity. It’s really only Alberta, Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia who rely on coal. We can have all of the technology we like, but if we don’t know how to integrate it, then we never will.
Canada will enjoy another record year for wind energy development in 2012 with the addition of approximately 1,500 MW of new installed capacity, according to the Canadian Wind Energy Association. Canada’s wind energy industry is now on track to easily surpass 10,000 MW of total installed capacity by 2015 – providing new opportunities for Canadian manufacturers.
Read MoreGN#3 Online; Canadian Solar Buys Stake in SkyPower; First Nations to Generate Own Power
Genesee#3 came back online at 15:16 yesterday – HE07 through HE13 were in the triple digits raising the 7X24 price for yesterday to $117.05/MWh.
Canadian Solar Inc said it will buy majority stake in 16 power projects from SkyPower Ltd for about C$185 million as part of its plan to concentrate on smaller utility-scale projects. The 190-200 megawatt projects, each of which has a 20-year power purchase contract from the Ontario Power Authority, will generate more than C$800 million in revenue for Canadian Solar. Ontario-based Canadian Solar already runs manufacturing facilities in Canada’s most populous province that gives generous subsidies to clean energy. Large utility-scale solar projects, which produce power for the wholesale electricity market, result in better margins than small roof-top installations. However, as clean-energy financing dries up, companies are gravitating toward easy-to-fund small projects. Canadian Solar Monday denied media reports that China National Offshore Oil Co was negotiating to buy the solar panel maker. The China Business Journal first reported on the weekend thatCNOOC was negotiating the purchase of Canadian Solar.
A Mi’kmaq development organization got approval Monday for what it hopes will be the first of three wind projects. Kwilmu’kw Maw-klusuaqn received the go-ahead for a four-megawatt project in Whynotts Settlement. The project was one of 18 approvals announced here under the province’s Community Feed-In Tariff Program. Under the program, Nova Scotia Power purchases electricity from community-based organizations that build wind, hydroelectric, tidal and biomass electricity generators.
Read MoreSD4 GN3 Offline SD5 Online; MATL Resumes; Floating Turbines
Sundance#4 went offline at 21:09 Friday; Sundance#5 came back online at 21:33 Friday; Genesee#3 went offline at 23:22 Saturday. The AESO short term outage shows we should get 300MW back tomorrow and 400MW Wednesday.
Construction work on the 214-mile Montana-Alberta Tie Line power line cutting across part of Montana to Canada has resumed after landowners along the route agreed to easements. A district judge in January ruled as constitutional a new law specifying that the power line to Canada and others like it have the power of eminent domain, a ruling that allowed condemnation proceedings against private landowners to move forward. That might have given landowners a reason to reach easement agreements with the company. NaturEner USA of San Francisco plans to use the line to send electricity generated from a $430 million wind farm it plans to build on the Kevin Rim in Glacier and Toole counties.
Current Connection LLC wants to use hundreds of floating turbines to generate electricity from water flowing in the St. Clair River between Michigan and Ontario, Canada, is hoping to make a trial run for the project in place to allow an 8- to 12-week test as early as July. The approval process for the test from several agencies has been moving slowly. The underwater turbine farm would be outside commercial shipping lanes used by Great Lakes freighters. Kyle Kruger, a fisheries biologist with the state Department of Natural Resources, says more work needs to be done to study the potential environmental impact.
Read More400MW Coal Gen Forecast Offline; Iceland to Provide 1/3 of UK Power
The AESO short term outage forecast indicates we will lose approx 400MW of coal generation. SaskPower work continues until HE 17 today.
Icelandic volcanoes soon could power British homes if the UK government secures a new energy deal. Energy minister Charles Hendry will visit Iceland in May to negotiate an agreement that would mean laying hundreds of miles of cables underwater to satisfy the UK’s energy needs. The cables, known as interconnectors, would carry low-carbon energy harvested from Iceland’s geothermal sources such as volcanoes and geysers. The plan could supply a third of the nation’s average electricity demand. The copper cables would need to be up to 932 miles (1,500 kilometers) long to reach Iceland — the longest in the world. If agreed, the project could be up and running before 2020. The project is part of the European Union’s pledge to have 20 percent of its energy come from renewable sources by the next decade. Icelandic interconnectors have been discussed for decades but were deemed too expensive. However, rising energy prices in Europe have made the proposal feasible. Iceland is keen to export energy after suffering a blow in the global financial crisis when its major banks collapsed at the end of 2008.
Read MoreSheernes#2 and Genesee#1 Online; Ontario Power Subsidy Costs Huge; BrightSource Pulls IPO
Sheerness#2 came back online at 11:36 and Genesee#1 at 22:40 yesterday. SaskPower maintenance at the border continues today from HE 9-24.
Ontario consumers will pay $285 million more annually for residential electricity and Canada could lose 41,000 full-time-equivalent jobs over a 20-year period due to Ontario’s subsidization of renewable energy, concludes a new study from the Fraser Institute. The study cautions that the Statistics Canada Input-Output model may overestimate the employment impacts from higher electricity prices in the residential sector when, as in the Ontario case, the adjustment period is long. However, the higher electricity prices resulting from FIT program subsidies will also have undesirable consequences for employment in the commercial and industrial sectors. The study also reviews barriers that stand in the way of the sound, sustainable development of renewable energy as a significant source of electric power in North America and makes recommendations for economically efficient energy policies.
On the eve before it was to go public, BrightSource Energy Inc., a solar thermal technology company, announced that it has decided not to pursue its initial public offering due to adverse market conditions. The company intends to withdraw its registration statement on Form S-1 as filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It had intended to raise $180 million in its IPO.
Read MoreSundance#5 Offline; SaskPower Maintenance; Ontario Eyes Energy Sector Overhaul
Sundance#5 went offline at 03:12 this morning. SaskPower has line maintenance from HE 09-17 no import to Alberta capacity will be available. AESO is forecasting plenty of $900+ hours today. The AESO web site shows “A supply shortfall is forecasted at 09:00 2012-04-11. Any generating asset that is planning to start, notify the SC as soon as possible”. HE 07 this morning came in at $634.94.
Mike Robinson with Utility Source here in Calgary shared the following with Chase yesterday – “I feel like I am watching a slow motion car crash. Maybe I’m nuts and everything is fine, but the long term adequacy report that the AESO puts out seems to say the same thing – we are in a very poor supply/demand situation for the next several years. Obviously no one (including me) likes $900/MWh prices and I completely agree with you about changes that need to be made with regard to how prices are set, but if there is no price signal to build new generation then we will have shortages. There is no other alternative.”.
The Ontario government is considering a significant overhaul of the province’s energy sector, including a selloff of municipally owned distribution utilities and a merger of two provincially owned planning agencies. The politically sensitive reforms were debated internally before this spring’s budget, and remain in play – albeit at a slower pace than Finance Minister Dwight Duncan would have preferred. Insiders suggest that Energy Minister Chris Bentley was less hawkish than Mr. Duncan, and that other cabinet members shared Mr. Bentley’s concerns about upheaval in a sector that has already caused the governing Liberals no shortage of headaches. So the changes were punted until after the budget, but not taken off the table entirely. Of the two, the merger of the two planning agencies – the Ontario Power Authority and the Independent Electricity System Operator – remains a more imminent possibility.
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