More wind power .....................................
Murray Lyons
Saskatchewan News Network
Tuesday, September 09, 2003
SASKATOON -- ATCO Power Generation appears to have become the favoured business partner of the provincial power utility with an announcement Monday it will join SaskPower in putting 150 megawatts of new wind-power generation onto the provincial grid in the next two years.
The deal will require an investment of about $250 million from the two partners and will boost current Saskatchewan wind-power production 10-fold.
ATCO is already in a 50-50 partnership with SaskPower International in two gas-fired generating plants -- the Cory co-generation facility at the PCS potash mine just west of Saskatoon and another at the Muskeg River mine in Alberta's Athabasca oil sands.
Premier Lorne Calvert and Energy Conservation Minister Peter Prebble joined ATCO Group of Companies president and CEO Nancy Southern on Monday at Innovation Place in Saskatoon to announce ATCO will partner with SaskPower International on a series of wind farms, built in 50-megawatt increments at several locations in Saskatchewan.
The premier said 150 megawatts of "green power" could light up 73,000 homes or almost all the residences in Saskatoon, for example.
This will be the first wind-powered project ATCO has invested in.
As she did when the Cory plant officially opened in the spring, Southern spoke glowingly of the NDP provincial government as a business partner.
"Saskatchewan aptly proclaims there is a lot of tomorrow in this province and some of that tomorrow is being announced today," said Southern. "Neither Cory nor the wind-power project we are announcing today would be possible without the visionary leadership that this government has demonstrated."
Asked how her verbal endorsing of the Saskatchewan NDP's energy policies might be perceived in the Calgary oil patch, Southern was nonplussed.
"Where I come from, as the premier says, good policy is always good politics," she said.
"I'm quite happy to endorse this government."
Southern said investing in wind power is increasingly attractive and cost-competitive with natural gas co-generation, especially if natural gas as a commodity jumps beyond $6 US a gigajoule as it has for much of 2003.
Garner Mitchell, SaskPower's vice-president of power production, said the comparative cost per megawatt between nature's free wind as an energy source and turbines burning expensive natural gas is based on the current capital cost of putting up wind turbines and the experience in Saskatchewan that the devices can deliver on average about 40 per cent of their design capacity.
"When wind power isn't being generated at full capacity, we either have some backup from hydro or some backup from natural gas co-generation," Mitchell said.
SaskPower currently has 17 megawatts of wind-power capacity, most of it near Gull Lake. Part of that power comes from a joint venture with SunBridge, an Alberta-based joint venture of Enbridge and Suncor Energy. The other wind-power source is SaskPower's own Cypress facility, which is being expanded by five megawatts this year.
Some of the fabrication work on the existing wind turbines, including the masts that hold the generators, have been built by Saskatoon's Hitachi Canadian Industries Ltd.
Both Southern and Mitchell said they expected Saskatchewan content would be part of the winning bid.
"We'd be hoping that (at) a minimum it would be 40 per cent," Mitchell said.
Saskatchewan Party MLA Wayne Elhard whose Cypress Hills constituency is the home for both existing wind-power projects, agrees there is growing consumer support for green power such as wind generation, but questions why SaskPower needs to be an investor.
Elhard said the investors behind the SunBridge plant were willing to expand the capacity of their plant in the Rural Municipality of Webb but were told that SaskPower wanted to be part of all future projects.
"I question why SaskPower needs to be a player in every one of these projects where there were private companies willing to bring their money here, " Elhard said.
He also stated SunBridge pays $100,000 in property taxes in the RM of Webb on its wind-power project while SaskPower does not pay any equivalent taxes on its Cypress facility in the RM of Carmichael.
Unlike the Cory co-generation plant, which was financed largely through non-recourse project financing where the debt incurred to build the plant did not flow back to the two parent companies, Southern said the wind facilities would likely be financed directly by ATCO and SaskPower.
"We'll be using balance-sheet financing because we'll be doing the financing in stages," she said.
Prebble told the press conference that all of Saskatchewan's new generating capacity in the next five years will be generated in an "environmentally progressive manner."
By Christmas time with the Cypress wind-power expansion, Prebble notes there will be enough wind-driven electricity from the Gull Lake area to meet the need of 9,000 homes |
