Tending to Our Wind Turbines

Reliability

Feb 19, 2010  Comment

As you may know, Yukon Energy has two experimental wind turbines on Haeckel Hill near Whitehorse. Together, they can power up to 150 homes. This week an article in the Yukon News stated that our wind turbines have fallen into disrepair after years of neglect. That is a false statement and we feel it's important that we correct the record.  Here are a few pieces of information we would like you to know:

  • If you look up at Haeckel Hill and see that the turbine blades aren't turning, that doesn't necessarily mean the turbines are broken. They will not generate power if there’s not enough wind, if there’s too much wind, or if there is rime ice on the blades which prevents them from turning. Rime icing is a huge challenge for us. We have tried a number of things to address this issue including applying special paint to the blades to try to repel the ice, and heating the blades. Nothing has worked very well.
     
  • At times when the turbines require repair, it’s not always possible to do so right away. In the winter especially, it is often unsafe for staff to do repairs and we must wait until weather conditions improve before we will allow employees to do the work. Safety is always the first priority.
  • Many of the parts on a wind turbine are not simple, off the shelf components; they need to be ordered from elsewhere – often either the U.S. or Europe – and they can take several weeks to arrive.
  • There is not a crane in the Yukon big enough to use for repairs on the wind turbines. A few years ago we required a crane and had to bring one up from Southern Canada at a cost of $180-thousand dollars.
     
  • In terms of our maintenance schedule, we do regular maintenance on our wind turbines just as we do on all our other assets. We are very conscious of the fact that Yukon Energy's assets belong to all Yukoners and that we have a duty to maintain them properly.
     

In spite of the challenges we face with wind, we are still looking at it as one part of an overall clean, renewable energy regime. We are studying Ferry Hill near Stewart Crossing as a possible site for a wind farm and we are also looking at the possibility of a 20 megawatt wind farm at Mt. Sumanik near Whitehorse. But under the best conditions, wind only operates 30 percent of the time. So that means for every megawatt of wind power we build, we need to build a megawatt of something else, since it is needed for the 70 percent of the time that the wind turbines aren't producing power.

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