What’s a wind farm exactly?
Source: CanWEA
It’s no secret that using the wind to create electricity has been around for a long time; remember windmills? When the wind turns the blades of a windmill, it spins a turbine inside a small generator to produce electricity. A typical modern wind turbine will produce enough electricity to meet the annual needs of about 500 homes.
“Wind farms” bring together groups of wind turbines to produce enough electricity to power thousands of homes. The world’s largest wind farm, located in Texas, consists of 421 turbines producing 735 Megawatts of electricity. The turbines cover nearly 47,000 acres (190 km²) of land.
There is a big difference between a wind farm (known as “large wind”) and “small wind”. “Small wind” usually involves either a small turbine powering a house or a medium-sized turbine powering a farm, business or a small community. Large wind provides electricity to the electric grid (rather than just a home or business).
Right now, wind farms in Canada have a capacity of 3,549MW – enough to power over 1 million homes or equivalent to about 1.1 % of Canada’s total electricity demand. Canada’s wind resource is well distributed in rural areas throughout the country with various wind farms in operation, and more now under construction.
Canada’s massive hydroelectric resource, which provides 60% of Canada’s electricity, is an excellent complement for wind energy and provides an excellent opportunity to integrate more wind energy into the system than is the case in many other countries.
Canadian wind farms
Courtesy of the Canadian Wind Energy Association
WindVision 2025: Powering Canada’s FutureWindVision
The Canadian Wind Energy Association (CanWEA) believes wind energy can satisfy 20 percent of Canada’s electricity demand by 2025. Achieving this vision will pay huge dividends:
- Generating $79 billion of investment that will make Canada’s wind energy sector a real player in a $1.8 trillion global wind industry
- Creating at least 52,000 high quality, full-time jobs including many in rural communities
- Producing $165 million in new annual revenues for municipalities
- Adding 55,000 MW of clean generating capacity that will strengthen our electrical grids and head off potential power shortages
- Stabilizing electricity prices
- Cutting Canada’s annual greenhouse gas emissions by 17 Megatonnes
To make WindVision 2025 a reality, CanWEA is calling on the federal and provincial governments to establish policies and programs addressing these five priorities:
- Providing fair value for the environmental attributes of wind energy
- Enhancing wind energy procurement processes
- Providing incentives to manufacturers of wind power equipment
- Planning and building ‘wind-friendly’ transmission infrastructure
- Streamlining permitting and approval processes for wind energy projects
Visit CanWEA to find out how this infinite source of clean energy will power Canada’s future, create new jobs, and reduce our impact on the environment. http://www.canwea.ca
