The president of Nova Scotia’s largest wind farm says his company is concentrating its energy these days on erecting the last 18 of the 27 turbines that will make up the $150-million Glen Dhu Wind energy project.
All of the components for the German-manufactured turbines have arrived and it’s just a matter of getting "them all erected," Mike Magnus of Shear Wind Inc. said in an interview Wednesday.
"Hopefully the weather holds out."
The company has three cranes on site working to erect the gigantic turbines. Magnus is hoping to get "two or three" in place in each of the next few weeks so that Shear Wind can meet its March 31 deadline of producing 60-megawatts of power for Nova Scotia Power.
The company already has nine turbines operating on the site, which straddles the Pictou-Antigonish county boundary.
Originally, Shear Wind planned on having the 27 turbines up and running by the end of December 2009, but it ran into financial troubles during the global recession that prevented it from securing financing for the capital-intensive project until late last year.
That’s when Inveravante, a privately held Spanish utility conglomerate, bought a 62 per cent stake in Shear Wind for $27 million, and a new deal was worked out with Nova Scotia Power that gave Shear Wind new deadlines for the production of power.
The Bedford renewable energy company met the first of those deadlines by producing 20 megawatts of green energy from the site by Dec. 31. That enabled the company to avoid paying Nova Scotia Power a $1.5 million penalty.
Magnus announced the company is moving its annual shareholder meeting to April 5 from Feb. 1 so that it will coincide with the completion of the Glen Dhu project.
The company also announced it has extended a stock option for Magnus to purchase one million shares at 30 cents, from now until June 26, 2012.
Options are "an incentive for any type of manager," Mangus said. "The reality is the options are all part of joining a company. Building a company is a significant task and you don’t build it in one or two years."
Shear Wind stock was trading up two cents a share Wednesday on the Toronto Stock exchange at 30 cents a share.
No comments:
Post a Comment