The Answer, My Friends, Is Blowin’ In The Wind
After a week in the Niagara region, I came home via Hwy#3, as my 20+ year old Volkswagen hippy van (with a max speed of 105 kmh) doesn’t dig the 401 with all the transport trucks whipping it around.
It’s a beautiful drive as the road hugs Lake Erie for a good portion of the trip, and when I got around Port Alma (just east of Wheatley) I finally saw the recent energy development that have a lot of the locals up-in-arms.
If you haven’t seen the monstrous trucks unloading the pieces of these huge wind turbines and driving them through Windsor, you are missing out. The things are HUGE! KEPA (Kruger Energy Port Alma) is handling everything from the transportation to the installation (click here for the history of the project). Here’s a few pics (all linked to their larger images) from my recent visit…
While we were pulled over on the side of this little dirt road, there was a steady stream of gawkers pulling over snapping pictures. I am still curious as to how people could look at these turbines and feel that they are not a benefit to the community/region. Whereas, personally, I believe in the further decentralization of our energy production, this is a monumental beginning of an industry whose proliferation could have enormous impacts on the economy of Windsor/Essex. The opposition to it sort of boggles my mind, and I cannot help but feel that this NIMBYism will have long-reaching ramifications to all of us.
Tags: Alternative Energy
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Love the pics. There’s one wind farm that’s a tourist attraction…can’t remember the city but it’s on the way back from Tobermory.
Al Gore was just on NPR talking about his energy speech (http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2008/07/17/more-gore-ex-vp-to-pitch-energy-revolution-today/) and stating how solar and wind energy are what we need to use to make our future cleaner and cheaper. Everyone says NIMBY but then complain that we pay too much for gas or that there are no jobs. Someone has to stay “YIMBY, because I love my province and I want to stay and I want to do my part to make my life and my home better.”
There’s a ton of turbines runing up and down highway 21 between Goderich and Kincardine, and there’s more every year when I head up the Bruce!
This is the industry that Windsor should be pushing for! I’ve mentioned this before… with so many empty factories and unemployed people in the area, this is the ideal sector to be in to bring back the people and investment to the area. I read that they are building a 148 turbine wind farm outside of Kingsville - and there will be no choice but to import them all. This is a terrible opportunity to miss.
Yes the will benefit the community and Hydro One was opposed because they would get their power supplied virtually free because of no manufacturing burden.
It’s not without it’s observed problems.
Development around them will have to be strictly controlled. Any building in the vicinity will change wind patterns. Also note these things will themselves change wind patterns. Some flora that depend on the wind to move their seeds may, I say may, become sparodic or even disappear.
Another situation is general aviation. From what I have been told these rotating blades will not have any lights to tell aircraft their true height.
Some will have a fixed light on the tower and only a few on a periphery will be lighted. A small aircraft flying at night or in low visibility will have to contend with these things if they are flying in the vicinity of an aerodrome. Only time will tell how visible these things will be.
Also there may be a problem with these things reflecting radar that track aircraft. I am not sure how, but I was told they are looking into it.
Plans are to have over 700 in Ontario alone. Let’s hope the savings are passed down to the consumer.
Please don’t try to tell me about the negatives of wind power … firstly, I don’t buy the hysteria created about planes, seeds, radio frequencies etc. … the bottom line is … i’d put one in backyard and deal with the “negatives” rather than suck up the fossil fuel residues of coal or “clean burning” gas!!
I was up in the Bruce last weekend and as I saw the many turbines in the horizon I thought they were pretty cool!! But a tourist site … I’m sorry, I love that area, the beaches, the hiking, the bike trails, but if you travel there to see wind turbines … well, that just weird!!! To each his/her own!
We spent a week in Tobermory enjoying the water and fishing and hiking but my husband was still pretty excited to see that you could go and get a close up look at how they worked. If we had more time, we would have taken the detour. Geeky?
I never stated about the “negatives” or hysteria.
There are consequences no matter what we do and it depends on what we are willing to accept.
I’m not against them.
Hopefully this is only the beginning.
Coupled with the proposed “solar farm” near Sarnia, it seems that maybe, just maybe things are starting to change…
Sorry kdduck … didn’t mean to jump down your throat … I recognize that consequences exist … I happen to have a serious complex about toxins in the environment and the impact of conventional power generation.
I also feel that some of the arguments are truly overblown … seriously, radio frequencies interrupted?? How long have we used windmills, as well, do high voltage lines running through our communities do this??
Also, in order for opponents to solidify their point of view, they often take to providing every single possible thing that could be impacted and in the process confuse and confound the issue completely … it becomes hysteria because some of the most minimal affects are sometimes given too much consideration and, ultimately there appears to be so many negatives that it doesn’t seem worthwhile.
I just shudder when I think of the ease at which gas power plants are erected within the city limits (and consider how lovely Riverside Drive will look to out-of-towners when they pass the lights, stacks, industriall thingamajigs … and oh yes, the green/brown tinged plume of crud floating above it … yes green/brown … It can be readily spotted over our west end plants!) and yet some choose to fight wind power with incredible passion. Does that make sense?
Not that I want to direct this to another topic but I feel that Greenlink has used this same type of argument to solidify its position …
funny how we come up with all these excuses not to have these things anywhere near us. i was just in italy and the netherlands and they seem to be light years ahead of us in terms of alternative energy sources. in italy, many homes are equipped with solar panels to heat their water. the netherlands is riddled with wind generators. cities that are ancient seem to be able to install them (along with light rail systems and a host of other systems that would be more than possible in our region), yet our area will come up with every excuse as to why it is not feasible. we went to monte cassino in italy and at the peak of a mountain there were at least a dozen generators. the netherlands has a wind farm off the coast of amsterdam in the north sea. they’ve been doing it for years! why can’t we?? what makes us so different/special that we can’t implement the same type of energy conservation methods?
When I was on the City Center West CIP I floated the idea of 3 windmills at the front of the area that would be used to power attractions or homes in the area as part of the subsidy of that area.
I thought they would look great on postcards, right in your face to Detroit as a strong message to Americans looking at us diffrentiating us from them that says
“This is how we roll!!!”
Does anyone know if anybody from local industry attended the meeting for the Wind Energy Supply Network yesterday?
According to the WEDC website, there was a meeting held “regarding building a supplier base for wind energy -with a US based not for profit group Executive Director Ed Weston of the Great Lakes Wind Network ( http://www.glwn.org/ ) being organized by Rainer Kunau.”
This seems like a great opportunity for local industry that is hurting from automotive restructuring to get on board with sustainable energy production. It would be interesting to know how much local interest there was in this.
More about the event can be read here: http://www.choosewindsoressex.com/news/events.cfm?id=378&year=2008&month=8