Just under two years after a public information meeting on a proposed wind turbine project here drew about 700 people, including hundreds of protestors, an update on construction of the project was provided at a much quieter meeting on Nov. 7.
The second meeting of a Community Liaison Committee (CLC) for the Conestogo Wind Energy Centre at the Drayton community centre drew only one member of the general public and Mapleton public works director Larry Lynch, in addition to committee members and officials of NextEra Energy Canada and committee facilitators from the IBI Group. Although the meeting format allowed for presentations from up to three delegations, no requests to make presentations were received, said Amy Shepard, a committee facilitator from the IBI Group.
Construction on the project is now underway and earlier in the day, CLC committee members had visited the site of the wind centre, where the first turbine was already standing with the rest expected to be set up over the next two weeks. The wind farm is expected to be generating power to the grid by mid-December.
NextEra spokesperson Josie Hernandez said public concern over wind turbine projects typically dies down once the project reaches the construction phase.
“There are always some concerns when a project is announced, because it’s new,” said Hernandez. “Once construction begins, historically, we don’t hear anything unless something goes wrong.”
Project construction manager Mike Bogie addressed questions and comments raised since the last CLC meeting, including an inquiry about Sunday construction activity.
“There is activity on Sundays. Absolutely we try to minimize it for all sorts of reasons, but we do have a schedule to meet,” said Bogie.
Bogie said wind turbine assembly and construction is currently underway and the process of commissioning the 10 turbines on the site is expected to be completed by the end of the November or early December.
Bogie reported that the 200-square-metre foundations have been poured. The electrical collector systems, consisting of a pad-mounted transformer and underground cabling systems, have also been completed. A substation located on private property on the west side of Sideroad 17 is also nearing completion, Bogie said.
A secondary containment system with a .25m high concrete berm will be installed around the main transformer to prevent contamination, “in the unlikely event of an oil leak,” Bogie said.
“The oil is all kept right there – there’s no harm to the environment,” he explained.
Before the end of November, two permanent 80m-high meteorological towers for the collection of data on wind conditions will be installed.
Site cleanup, Bogie noted, will take place in the spring.
Doug McIntosh, regional operations manager, explained that once facility is running, two or three full-time technical administration staff would be required to maintain and operate the facility. Primary workers will be wind technicians, who carry out maintenance on the site, and a site supervisor.
Wind turbines will be in operation 65 to 75 per cent of the time when wind speed is within the operating range. If conditions fall outside of normal operating range (i.e. low hydraulic pressures, unusual vibrations or higher generator temperatures) the wind turbine will immediately take itself out of service and report the condition electronically.
McIntosh noted the turbines are shut down immediately if icy conditions develop and restarted after the icy conditions are over. McIntosh noted the turbines “won’t ice up” when not operating, so shutting them down “actually results in less downtime.”
Once in operation, the project’s 10 turbines are expected to generate up to 23 megawatts of energy, enough to power 5,750 homes. Also announced at the meeting was a plan to donate $20,000 per year over the next five years to the Trees for Mapleton program.
Derek Dudek, community and municipal relations director said Next Era “thought it was a good synergy for what we’re proposing,” as one of the purposes of the organization’s tree planting is to create windbreaks to protect farm fields from wind erosion.
The next CLC meeting has been tentatively scheduled for some time in February. Shepherd said the fourth and final committee meeting would likely be held closer to the end of 2013.
