Aside from the cost of the turbines and towers, there are two main components of the cost of construction of a wind farm. One is the transporting of the turbines and towers to the site and erecting them. The other is the connecting of the power generated by the wind farm to the transmission grid of the Utility.

The state-of-the-art wind turbine today consists of an 80-meter high steel tower containing a turbine at the top which is powered by the wind turning blades that are 90 meters long. One such wind turbine has a base diameter of 15 feet, weighs 200 tons and is capable of producing 2 MW of electricity annually.

Sky Harvest plans to construct over 80 wind turbines on this Saskatchewan site.

Transportation and erection costs will be minimized by virtue of the relatively flat land and open space in an area well serviced by both road and rail. Erection requires the services of a mobile, 500-ton crane of which there are only six in North America. The cost of transporting the crane to and from the site and the cost of the duration of its’ use will be amortized over 80 or more turbines, thus providing economies of scale.

Interconnecting with transmission grid costs will be near zero due to having a 230kV transmission line running through the site. Most wind farms are over 10 miles from an appropriate transmission line and the cost of building a connection to the grid is over one and a half million dollars per mile!

Another advantage of the location is its closeness to the Gardiner Dam. Chris Craddock, President and CEO of Sky Harvest, explains that “because of its proximity to the Gardiner Dam, SaskPower will have greater options for distribution of the power from this particular site. As well, they will be better able to coordinate the output of the Sky Harvest wind farm with their other hydro power generation thus ‘smoothing out’ the overall power supply.”

The total cost of the purchase, transportation and erection of the 80 turbines will be approximately 350 million dollars. Funds have already been raised for studies and permitting to take this project to the Power Purchase Agreement phase.