Source: Canadian Wind Energy Association
What are the Benefits of wind power?
Cleaner air is just one reason to increase the role wind power plays in Canada’s supply mix. Let’s take a look at some other good reasons:
Wind energy preserves water resources- Wind energy is compatible with other land uses and can serve as a boost for rural economic development.
- Wind energy does not produce any harmful waterborne emissions, or toxic solid wastes.
- Wind energy is completely renewable, highly reliable and very efficient.
- Wind energy is one of the most economical sources of new large-scale electricity generation.
- Wind energy is becoming even more economic to produce as economies of scale are reached and as electricity prices increase.
- Wind energy is good for employment and job creation: it is estimated that the Canadian wind industry employed 3,785 people in 2006.
- Wind energy supports economic growth: in 2006 the wind industry contributed $1.6 billion to Canada Gross Domestic Product (GDP)
- Wind energy generates tourism for local communities.
- Wind energy creates alternative revenues for farmers who lease their land.
- Wind energy offsets the emissions of other energy sources, thus reducing our contribution to global climate change.
- Using wind to produce enough power for over 200 homes (2,000,000 kWh) of electricity instead of burning coal will leave 900,000 kilograms of coal in the ground and reduce annual greenhouse gas emissions by 2,000 tonnes. This has the same positive impact as taking 417 cars off the road or planting 10,000 trees.
An infinite source of clean power: Canada’s bountiful resource.
Wind is powered by the sun. In fact, all renewable energy, and even energy in fossil fuels, ultimately comes from the sun. The sun heats our planet to different temperatures in different places and at different times. This unequal distribution of heat is what creates wind as warm air rises and cooler air descends to fill the void. Wind is the ongoing movement of this air.
As the sun warms the earth, it in turn, warms the air above it, making it less dense or lighter. As the light air rises, it creates a low pressure zone near the ground. Air from surrounding cooler areas rushes in to balance the pressure. These are called local winds. Temperature differences between the polar caps and equator, as well as the rotation of the earth, produce similar results on a global scale, called prevailing winds.
So how much wind do we have in Canada? We have more than we could ever use, and it’s free. Our vast landscape, our three windy coastlines, the plains and mountains all contribute to this endless resource. Canada has still only scratched the surface of its massive wind energy potential, which currently powers over 1 million Canadian homes. Tomorrow we hope to do even more. Countries like Denmark already get over 20% of their electricity from wind. If we did the same in Canada, we would have enough wind energy to power 17 million homes! As long as the wind continues to blow, there is a great future in wind energy.
Capturing the wind for a cool planet
The modern wind turbine was built to adapt to all kinds of wind and weather conditions. Turbines can even be installed on water; they don’t need to be just on land.
Wind turbines generally consist of large blades mounted on tall towers attached to a horizontal shaft. As the wind blows, these blades cause the shaft to turn. The shaft is attached to a generator located inside the head, or “nacelle” of the turbine, which generates electricity. Cables carry this electrical current to transmission lines that then carry it to homes and businesses. Modern turbines rotate quite slowly, at an average speed of between 18 to 20 revolutions per minute.
Maintenance issues are also much smaller on a wind farm. At some conventional power plants, the entire plant may have to be shut down for repairs whereas at a wind farm, maintenance takes place one turbine at a time. This has led to availability factors (referring to the percent of time that a turbine is available to capture the wind) of 98% – much higher than conventional forms of energy production.
Wind Power is Reliable
The wind turbines that you see today are the result of decades of research and development. Thanks to these efforts, modern turbines are highly efficient and a typical unit alone can generate enough electricity to power over 500 homes. The science of wind turbine placement has advanced a great deal, too – nowadays, the output of a wind farm can be predicted accurately well before a shovel hits the ground.
As long as there is wind, there will be wind power
With good placement, a modern wind turbine will typically produce electricity 70 percent of the time. Enhanced technology and design improvements have also played a part in increasing the reliability of wind power allowing turbines to generate electricity in all but the most extreme weather conditions.
But what happens when the wind isn’t blowing? Here it is important to remember that the wind never stops blowing everywhere at once. Experience from around the world has shown that a large number of wind turbines spread over a wide geographic area will actually produce a consistent amount of power. And the use of advanced wind and weather forecasting tools helps to make wind energy more predictable and more reliable than ever before.
The Power of Two
Wind energy is part of a “balanced energy diet” and is a perfect complement to other conventional forms of electricity generation. One example is wind and hydroelectric. Over short time periods (days and weeks), hydro can be used to compensate for variations in wind power production. Over long time periods (years and decades), wind can be used to compensate for fluctuations in reservoir levels, an effect that will be increasingly felt through climate change.
The variability of wind matches the variability of demand. Generally wind is strongest in cold-weather months when our demand for electricity is highest.
Wind Energy for Everyone
Canada can produce wind energy for everyone, from a small home turbine to a utility grid.
Large-scale wind generation provides power to your local utility grid, just like other conventional forms of generation like coal, nuclear, hydro or natural gas. When they are clustered together in a wind farm, turbines can even produce power for thousands of distant homes and businesses.
Small-scale wind turbines can provide on-site power to a home, farm or business. Any additional electricity that is generated beyond the user’s needs can be fed into the local electrical grid. For more information on small-scale wind generation visit our section on Small-scale Wind Energy.
Believing in the power of the Wind – why wind is right – right now
Canada’s electricity system is at a crossroads. Demand is rising and many power plants are approaching retirement. We need more power, and concerns over climate change, air pollution and acid rain damage mean we have to look at cleaner ways to generate it.
Wind is an obvious part of the solution. Wind is quick to install and produces no air pollution or greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change. In fact, in light of the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which warns that in order to avoid the catastrophic impacts of climate change, we need to get global emissions to peak and start to decline before 2020, wind energy may well be the best solution right now. “In this critical period between now and the end of the next decade, we are really it on the supply side and that is a pretty large responsibility,” says Steve Sawyer, the secretary-general of the Global Wind Energy Council.
What are our choices? Nuclear power has no emissions, but for the technology just to maintain its current market share, 150-180 new plants will need to be built between now and 2020. The complexities around getting those facilities permitted and constructed make it unlikely.
Clean coal is an option being pursued by power companies around the world, but commercialization of the technology is still years away. The Canadian Clean Power Coalition estimated that the earliest it can get a planned 500 MW demonstration plant operating is 2015.
New large hydro is a possibility; it faces long planning horizons and fierce public opposition to the environmental devastation caused by flooding huge tracts of land. Small run-of-river hydro facilities have fewer impacts, but are becoming increasingly difficult to access. Natural gas generating plants are easy to build, flexible to operate and produce fewer emissions than coal, but dwindling supplies and uncertainty over what fuel prices will be next year, much less 20 years down the road, make it a risky choice. Other renewable energy technologies, like solar power and ocean energy, are not yet mature enough to make a substantial contribution over the short term.
