Will a 5-stage wind turbine project near Sylvan Lake, AB be the answer for the base load electrical requirements in the area?
RED DEER, Alberta – Montreal eco-tech startup, Tabarnak Putain Calice Energy (TPCE) has announced today the start of construction of Connard Merde, a wind project in Red Deer County, just east of Sylvan Lake. The wind farm will feature 59 German-made Ostie turbines and will be the first of its kind in the world using what the company calls Multi-Stage Input with Backup (tradename of MSIB 2000™) wind turbine technology. The first phase of the project is proposed to generate 175MW with the potential to expand to 450MW after second and third stages.
Connard Merde will create up to 375 jobs during the peak construction phase and up to 25 permanent full-time jobs once operational. TPCE says it will work closely with stakeholders, including local government agencies, landowners to ensure a smooth development and to maximize the positive impacts of the project on the community.
According to a press release held at a downtown Montreal Schwartz’s Deli location yesterday, the company’s President and CEO, Stephan Geihboat, explained to the bustling crowd of 17 that the project, which was largely funded by the Federal Government, will be completed on budget and on schedule.
Stephan Geihboat
“The key to securing funding for this project was the novelty of our bleeding-edge proprietary MSIwB technology that always ensures that the wind farm project generates electricity, even when it’s not windy. Our VP of engineering told me that traditional wind farms are only effective when the wind is blowing. And understanding that we can’t control the wind, we devised a series of backup inputs that will keep those turbines spinning – rain or shine.” – Stephan geihboat, President of Tabarnak Putain Calice Energy
2P News’ field correspondent, Rodecker Smith, sat down with TPCE’s VP of Engineering, Dr. E. Norma Stits, where she explained the concept behind the company’s MSIB 2000™ technology. “The secret to our wind farm technology, that ensure that we are able to always provide baseload power requirements to the grid, even when the wind is not blowing, is a series of input stages that are employed to overcome the challenges of the previous stage,” Dr. Stits told 2P News. The cascading stages are outlined in the table below.
Stage
Technology
Challenge
1
Standard Wind Turbines – electricity generated by wind that spins the blades of the turbine
Wind not blowing –> Stage 2 kicks in
2
Blade-mounted solar array – solar electricity used to run a motor that spins the turbines
Sun not shining –> Stage 3 kicks in
3
Hydro power – if the sun isn’t shining, it’s probably cloudy, and often it rains when it’s cloudy. Falling rain will turn a hydroelectric generator whose electricity is used to power a bank of incandescent lights (think outdoor stadium lighting) that are pointed to the solar panels to charge them up
Not raining or raining too lightly –> Stage 4 kicks in
4
Geothermal – a 2000m deep geothermal loop is drilled at each turbine site that will generate electricity that will power both the incandescent solar lights and the auxiliary motor that turns the heavy turbine blades
Still not meeting baseload requirements –> Stage 5 kicks in
5
Battery Backup – A bank of batteries that can provide 250KW of electrical power will be installed at the base of each turbine. Charged by electricity from soon-to-be decommissioned coal-fired power plants and local diesel co-gens, they should be able to top up power to the solar lights and aux motors.
The company’s predictive analytical models showed that by Stage 5, base load requirements will be met 93% of the time.
Sylvan Lake resident, Les Fairdy, upset about the project
Les Fairdy, a 41-year resident of Sylvan Lake, opposes this project because, “it’s gonna make things noisy around here, to say the least!” The 63 year-old Saskatoon, Saskatchewan native doesn’t believe that this cascading series of input stages to the wind turbines can be very efficient nor a good way to reduce emissions. “I suspect this project will be emission orders of magnitude more emissions with their staged process than they are saving by using wind power. Idiots. If this company needed a very windy place to build this wind farm, they should have chosen somewhere in central Saskatchewan – it’s always super windy out there because Manitoba really sucks, and Alberta really blows.”
