Politics ‘blatant’ in wind program

Scotian WindFields: New policy on turbines favours Dartmouth firm
By BRUCE ERSKINE Business Reporter
Fri, Jul 29 - 4:55 AM

Old-school politics threatens the future of wind energy in the province, says the chief executive officer of Scotian WindFields Inc.

"You can’t create this monopolistic environment and expect a successful program," Barry Zwicker said Thursday in interview.

He was reacting to government directives released this week for the community feed-in tariff program.

The program is designed to allow community-based green energy producers to sell energy profitably to Nova Scotia Power.

Scotian WindFields is involved in the development of eight community-based wind projects across the province involving 50-kilowatt turbines.

Zwicker said there are two 50-kilowatt turbines installed in Canada, the AOC version, made in Quebec, and the Endurance one, made in British Columbia.

He said the provincial directives favour the Quebec turbine, which has blades made and assembled in Nova Scotia, and would eliminate the use of a British Columbia turbine his company favours.

"The directives say the swept area of the blades can be no greater than 200 square feet," which would make the 190-square-foot AOC turbine the only acceptable 50-kilowatt option, he said.

"It eliminates 50 per cent of the choice."

The policy change was never discussed with industry representatives or during public consultations, Zwicker said.

Scotian has invested millions in projects that would use the Endurance turbine, which he said best fits Nova Scotia’s relatively low velocity but consistent wind regime, he said.

"We believe it’s a blatant effort to create a situation where there is no competition for the AOC machine."

The government knew before setting the directives that some community groups planned to use the British Columbia turbine, he said.

Zwicker wasn’t blaming Seaforth Energy of Dartmouth, which makes the AOC turbine blades, for the situation.

But he said the government has provided the company with loans and suggested the province may be in a conflict of interest.

"We want them to go back where they were and accept 50-kilowatt machines with nameplate capacity rather than setting criteria that blatantly eliminate other good turbines from being installed in Nova Scotia."

Energy Minister Charlie Parker denied that the directives were designed to give Seaforth a singular competitive advantage.

"Absolutely not," Parker said. "(They’re) designed to encourage small wind development in our communities and there’s many different machines being manufactured worldwide (to) those standards.

"Certainly, Seaforth is one of them, but it will be up to the community groups which machines they want to use."

The directives, based on international standards, will be reviewed next year, he said.

Zwicker suggested that the minister didn’t understand his own directives, since the list of 50-kilowatt turbines that community groups can choose from includes only one, the AOC version, that meets their criteria.

"All the rest are 10, 15, eight kilowatts," he said.

Zwicker also took exception to the minister’s defence of the use of international standards in establishing the directives, which he said are opposed by the Canadian Wind Energy Association.

"They’re using U.S. wind standards," Zwicker said.

He took little solace from the minister’s promise that there would be a review because the directives have a serious impact on the company’s immediate plans.

"Financing of community-owned projects is difficult."

Zwicker said Scotian won’t switch to the AOC turbine, which he called inappropriate for the company’s projects.

"We simply won’t do it. The point is we have no options."

http://thechronicleherald.ca/Business/1255641.html

Turbine firm gets lift from N.S. grant

By SELENA ROSS
Fri, Jul 29 - 4:55 AM

Wind turbine manufacturer Seaforth Energy Inc. is scaling up production with the help of an $88,000 grant from the provincial Productivity Investment Program.

The Dartmouth company recently bought its third blade mould, which allows it to more than triple production, Seaforth vice-president John Simon said at a news conference Thursday.

The wind turbine business is booming and Seaforth can barely keep up with demand, Simon said.

Last year, the company had one blade mould, which could only produce one complete three-piece set of blades each month. Then Seaforth added a second mould.

The third mould cost $100,000, about 20 per cent of which was covered by the province through the investment program.

It will make a huge difference because it is "designed better than the first two," Simon said. "So that one’s even more productive, it’s faster, and now we can have three going at once."

Economic and Rural Development and Tourism, which administers the grants, said the money will bring Seaforth a 50 per cent increase in productivity and improve sales revenue while creating six more jobs.

Aside from a $25,500 grant for equipment purchases, Seaforth also got $62,500 from the program for employee training.

The grant was announced in the wind turbine manufacturing workshop, where young workers in overalls bent over the two older blade moulds, gluing fibreglass in place. The blade-manufacturing technicians are apprentices from community colleges, said Simon.

The company has 20 employees, seven of whom have been hired in the past nine months.

Most of the companies supplying Seaforth with the parts to build the AOC 15-50 turbines are Nova Scotian, including Advanced Precision, a machining and fabrication company based in Dartmouth.

Seaforth Energy has installed turbines off the coast of the southern U.S., the Maritimes and Scotland, said company president Jonathan Barry.

Wind power production is a capital-intensive business, Barry said. But the global market for green energy is set up to help companies like Seaforth grow quickly. Several countries, including the U.K., Greece, Italy and Israel, offer a guaranteed rate on long 15- or 20-year contracts.

After installing the turbines, wind power providers like Seaforth receive 35 to 45 cents per kilowatt hour for the remainder of the contract.

These policies, called feed-in tariffs, are meant to encourage investment in renewable energy. Nova Scotia became the third province in Canada to announce its own feed-in tariff program last month.

The province has set a target of producing 25 per cent of its energy through clean, renewable sources by 2015. The target will go up to 40 per cent by 2020.

Economic Development Minister Percy Paris said Thursday that the province learned hard lessons during the offshore oil industry boom.

"We were in a predicament where we never had the highest-skilled individuals to do the offshore," Paris said. "Then when the offshore came onshore, there we were stuck again because we had to bring in people from outside our jurisdiction to do the jobs that should be done by Nova Scotians."

In Seaforth’s case, the investment program will help ensure that it has the skilled workers it needs, he said.

Though green energy job training is a priority, the province does not give special funding preference to companies in the green energy sector, the minister said.

The Productivity Investment Program, launched in November, has approved or disbursed funding for a variety of local companies, including boatbuilders A.F. Theriault & Son Ltd. ($21,000), Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters ($46,185), Nicom IT Solutions ($9,980) and Maritime Pride Eggs ($18,188).

The program covers up to 20 percent of equipment purchases, reimbursed after the company has submitted proof of purchase, and up to 90 percent of training costs.

The province had previously given Seaforth a $200,000 loan guarantee in September 2010 from the Industrial Expansion Fund.

http://thechronicleherald.ca/Business/1255758.html

French plan to build wind farm off D-day site upsets Canadian veterans

Diana Mehta

The Canadian Press

TORONTO - A French plan to install towering wind turbines within sight of a beach where thousands of Canadians fought a bloody battle launching the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe is raising the ire of some veterans.

"I think it's a disgusting affair," said Jack Martin, who was among the Canadians who stormed Juno Beach during the D-Day landings of 1944.

"I saw so many of my buddies and friends die on Juno Beach that I figure it is very hallowed grounds."

Martin was a company quartermaster-sergeant with the Queen's Own Rifles during the assault and later ran tours to the beach where 359 Canadians were killed.

The French government announced last week that it was receiving tenders for over 1,000 wind turbines off the country's northwestern coast, including at Courseulles-sur-mer, where Juno Beach is located. The entire project is eventually predicted to power more than 4.5 million homes.

The numbers don't sway 87-year-old Martin. He said the turbines might take away from the sombre historical significance of the site.

"We were the only regiment without tank support and yet we penetrated further inland than any other unit in the whole D-Day assault," he said. "It's very important that people know what the Canadians had to go through to make it a historical site."

Retired major Roy E. Eddy agrees, saying it's important for Canadians to keep the memory of Juno Beach alive.

"I'd like to forget about it, but I don't want to," said the veteran, who was 20 when he lost many friends on the beach. "None of us slept for about 72 hours, the noise and the sound was just earth shattering."

The 86-year-old said he's not against wind farms, but doesn't want to see them constructed opposite an area where so many Canadians died.

Veterans Affairs Canada says it "understands and shares" the concerns of those who fought for freedom.

"We wouldn't see it appropriate to develop on the actual site where the battle of Juno occurred," said a spokeswoman for Veterans Affairs Minister Steven Blaney.

But while voices in Canada have lashed out against the French plan, the Juno Beach Centre at the famous site itself has decided to accept the French government's proposal.

"We see absolutely no impact other than the visual one, and we're prepared to live with it," said director Don Cooper.

The centre was approached by French locals looking to oppose the project but after consultation with its board, which includes veterans, decided not to stand in way of the plan which will see turbines developed some 10 kilometres offshore.

"In a perfect world one might say we'd prefer not to have it, but I think it's something that goes with what happens in the environment today," said Cooper. "To me it's no different than a freighter going by in the channel."

Yet that visual change to the landscape is exactly what historian Rudyard Griffith points to when explaining why some might have a strong reaction against the turbine plan.

"We are changing forever the visual landscape of a globally significant Canadian site," said the co-founder of the former Dominion Institute.

"To be able to walk those beaches, and see them and imagine them as if it was 1944 is, in some ways, essential to keeping that historical memory alive, and in turn that memory shapes and forms our identity today."

Griffith points out that the historical site is not just the beach, but also the waters beyond which brought Allied troops to the shore of Nazi-occupied France. Having turbines constructed so close to where so many fought would be a jarring image at a site preserved to remind visitors of the sacrifices made.

"The coast of Normandy is vast, you'd think they could have the ability to station the windmills at other places along the coast that provide their needs for clean energy but don't mar the visual landscape of Juno beach."

The European Platform Against Windfarms is among those disapproving of the project.

"It's not offshore, it's along the coast, it's only 10 kilometres from the D-Day beach," chairman Jean-Louis Butre, said in an interview from Paris. "People are really upset about what's going on, so upset that we received comments from everywhere."

The organization — a collective of 483 groups — has recorded more that 2,300 signatures for an online petition decrying the project, which includes comments from Canadians.

Butre said in addition to being plainly visible during the day, the flashing lights of the turbines would create a "discotheque" effect around the D-Day beaches at night. Among the complaints he's received he even mentions a call from a retired Royal Air Force pilot.

"They say 'we are going to bomb those wind turbines,'" he said with a chuckle.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/french-plan-build-wind-farm-off-d-day-080006334.html

Ownership rules change for green projects

By BEVERLEY WARE South Shore Bureau
Sat, Jul 16 - 4:55 AM

CHESTER — The rules have changed for municipalities that want to get in on green energy projects.

The Community Feed-in Tariff program encourages community-owned renewable energy projects by guaranteeing a price per megawatt hour.

When announced, the program grouped municipalities in the same category as Mi’kmaq bands, co-operatives, universities, non-profits and community economic development organizations and said they must own at least 51 per cent of a project in order to qualify. The other 49 per cent could be held privately.

But that’s no longer the case.

"Right now they’re telling us we have to own 100 per cent of a project," Chester Warden Allen Webber told municipal council this week after meeting with the province’s Department of Energy.

"It’s a game changer for us."

Department spokeswoman Nancy Watson said it turns out the 51 per cent rule violates the Municipal Government Act "and the act trumps COMFIT regulations."

That means municipalities must completely own windmill, biomass or tidal energy projects.

Watson said the province has agreed to extend Municipal Finance Corp. funding to such projects, which will give municipalities "access to capital at very low rates."

Municipalities can still have a private partner design, build and operate the windmill but a private partner cannot have any ownership in the project, she said.

That was news to Rodrigo Moura of AnaiaGlobal Renewable Energies Inc., who appeared before Chester council this week. His company is a joint venture between Grupo Guascor of Spain and Membertou Corporate Division. It wants to form partnerships with municipalities across Nova Scotia to bring community-based wind energy to the province.

His company has already held public information sessions in Wedgeport and in West Jeddore, where it has proposed building wind farms.

Moura told Webber he would be going back to the Energy Department to double check the ownership rules.

"Personally, I would prefer the option of choosing whether or not we have a private-sector partner," Webber said Friday.

The municipality has done some preliminary investigation of winds in the area but has not yet decided if it will build a wind turbine.

The province has only just started accepting applications under the community feed-in tariff program.

Windmills must be operational by December 2014.

A number of wind farms have begun popping up across Nova Scotia, most recently on Nuttby Mountain in Truro, Digby Neck and Church Point.

In Digby County, the municipality is amending its land-use bylaw to allow for this new class of windmill projects.

Community-scale turbines are slightly smaller than commercial types yet larger than personal-use windmills.

http://thechronicleherald.ca/NovaScotia/1253589.html

Wind developer vows to ease military’s worries

Greenwood: Turbines would be too close
By JOANN ALBERSTAT Business Reporter
Sat, Jul 9 - 4:54 AM

Military concerns about a $60-million Annapolis Valley wind project won’t shoot down the energy project, the developer says.

Sprott Power Corp. plans to build a 12-turbine wind farm in the Hampton Mountain area, four kilometres north of Bridgetown.

Officials at 14 Wing Greenwood say turbines shouldn’t be allowed within a 46-kilometre radius of the Canadian Forces base because turning blades could interfere with radar. The base is 40 kilometres from the proposed wind farm.

Jeff Jenner, Sprott Power president, said Friday the Toronto company is working to address military concerns and has hired a consultant to study the issue.

"I think we will be able to find a couple of solutions that will work for everybody," Jenner said.

But Sprott doesn’t plan to relocate any towers, which have received provincial environmental approvals, he said.

The military voiced its concerns to Sprott during the environmental approval process last year, the company president said. Base officials raised their objections again this week during public meetings into new wind turbine rules proposed by Annapolis County.

A spokesman for 14 Wing Greenwood was out of the province Friday and not available for comment. But Maj. Al Harvey told a public meeting in Kings County in January that having turbines within a 46-kilometre radius of the base could make it difficult for air traffic controllers to see aircraft flying in and out of the Greenwood on their radar screens.

"It is becoming a worldwide major problem for all air traffic control radars dealing with significant interference from nearby wind turbines," the minutes of the meeting quote Harvey as saying.

Jenner said Friday base officials have told Sprott the turbines could interrupt radar coverage with an emergency runway.

"There’s some mitigating work that can be done because wind farms are situated around the world within 40 kilometres of radar installations," he said.

Jenner said it may be possible to adjust radar angle or have a plan in place to halt turbines in case of an emergency, depending on how often the runway is used.

The latest radar systems are able to recognize turbines, the company president said.

Sprott is still in the process of receiving renewals for building permits it held for properties in Arlington, Arlington West and Hampton, Jenner said.

In April, Sprott asked the Nova Scotia Supreme Court to overrule a municipal decision denying the renewal.

Annapolis County announced last month it was changing its planning strategy to allow Sprott to proceed with most of the turbines.

http://thechronicleherald.ca/Business/1252513.html

Wind farms’ business could take off

N.S. will call for renewable power plans next year
By JOANN ALBERSTAT Business Reporter
Thu, Jul 7 - 4:54 AM

Wind farm developers will get a chance early next year to apply to get their large-scale projects off the ground.

An Energy Department spokeswoman said Wednesday a call for bids from independent producers is expected in the first part of 2012 to develop the next round of large renewable energy electricity projects in the province

"The expectation is that it will be mostly wind," Nancy Watson said in an interview.

She said there’s nothing stopping applications for other types of green energy projects.

The department announced Monday that it has chosen an independent renewable electricity administrator to oversee the bid process and make recommendations to the department.

Power Advisory LLC, based in Carlisle, Mass., will help draft the call for bids and power purchase agreement. The consultant, which also has an office in Toronto, will also hold consultations in the fall on the bid process.

Watson said department officials had their first meeting with the consultant by teleconference on Tuesday.

Independent producers will be bidding for a share of the 300 gigawatt hours per year of electricity that the province wants to buy from them. That’s equal to 100 megawatts of wind power. Nova Scotia Power, the province’s privately owned electric utility, will develop an equal amount of renewable electricity under the province’s renewable energy plan.

The strategy calls for 25 per cent of Nova Scotia’s electricity to come from renewable sources by 2015 and 40 per cent by 2020.

Several wind farm developers have unveiled proposals for large projects, including ones in Jeddore, Weymouth, Parrsboro and Cape Breton, in anticipation of the call for bids.

Some developers have said they expected proposals to be sought this summer.

Dan Roscoe, chief operating officer of Scotian WindFields Inc., said he doesn’t think the industry will have any problems with the bid call being early next year.

"It’s something that we think is a good step," he said of having the administrator in place.

"Essentially what would happen before is that the procurement process was being overseen by Nova Scotia Power and they were also a generator. I wouldn’t go so far to say that they actually have a conflict of interest but it certainly creates the perception."

Roscoe’s company works on smaller, community-based wind projects, swhich will be able to supply 100 megawatts of electricity through the province’s new community feed-in tariff program.

The idea of having an administrator involved in large-scale projects was one of 25 recommendations made to the Dexter government last year in a report by Dalhousie University professors David Wheeler and Michelle Adams.

The Energy Department said Power Advisory’s work is expected to take nine months but the contract is for one year, with an option to renew.

The company will be paid an hourly rate of $255, plus legal fees.

http://thechronicleherald.ca/NovaScotia/1252086.html