More wind turbines going up in Chatham-Kent; millions more to be added to Ontario electricity bills
Chatham-Kent residents living near Wheatley Ontario were surprised to see construction work last week, and delivery of components for industrial-scale or grid-scale wind turbines.
The “Romney Wind Energy Centre” turbines are now being erected, with a projected commercial operation date early next year.
Romney was one of five LRP I (Large Renewable Procurement) projects that received contracts in 2016 under the Wynne government; three of those (Dutton-Dunwich, Otter Creek, and La Nation) were “cancelled” by the Ford government last year, but two were considered to be too far along in the process, having achieved “Key Development MIlestones” or KDMs as the IESO calls them, to be cancelled.
Pity.
Romney will cost Ontario electricity customers more than $260 million over its 20-year contract. The maximum pre-construction liability for cancelling the project would have been around $500,000.
The project capacity is 60 megawatts of power, which Ontario does not need at present. Wind power is produced out of phase with demand in Ontario, and wind power projects rarely achieve more than 30% of capacity. Developer EDF of France of France promised construction updates for the projects so residents can know when traffic will be disrupted, but the last update posted was for a single week in August.
The other project that escaped cancellation was “Nation Rise” in North Stormont in Eastern Ontario. The community there launched an appeal, which was dismissed and currently has a final appeal and a request for a Stay of Construction before the MInister of Environment, Conservation and Parks. That project will cost electricity customers more than $400 million, and posed significant environmental risks as presented in the appeal.
The Romney project was not appealed.
6 Comments
Richard Mann
FYI I am attaching a letter from Dr Bokhout, acting medical officer of health, Huron County Health Unit on Sept 16, 2019.
The letter is to a citizen in Huron County.
I am publishing with the permission of the recipient.
Does this letter withstand scrutiny? Is this acceptable, given that ongoing lawsuits have all failed?
Sincerely,
Richard Mann
Encl: Dr Bokhout letter.
From: Maarten Bokhout
To: Carla Stachura ; Erica Clark
Sent: Monday, September 16, 2019, 11:14:02 PM EDT
Subject: possible adverse health effects from wind turbines
Dear Ms. Stachura,
I am responding to your email addressed to Dr. Erica Clark, dated August 29, 2019. I have reviewed your correspondence of August 14 and Rick Chappell’s May 15, 2018 response to the article “Altered Cortical and Subcortical…(etc)”.
I offer the following:
Your concern is that the wind turbines in your vicinity are noncompliant with MOE noise regulations. The noise is tonal. This is significant, as the foregoing article suggests that “infrasound near the hearing threshold may induce changes of neural activity across several brain regions,some of which…are regarded as key players in emotional and autonomic control “.
I am sympathetic to your ongoing concerns suggesting that there is a link between wind turbine noise and your (and your partner’s) health and wellbeing. In part, it was your persistence in notifying us at the health unit of your concerns that led me to seek approval for a study to try to determine whether or not there were particular health issues which could be linked to wind turbine activity. The study was approved but we were unable to attract enough participants to do a quantitative analysis of the data gathered. We will complete a descriptive analysis in the next month or so, but this will, unfortunately, not give us enough information to be able to state whether or not not the presence of wind turbines have an adverse effect on the PUBLIC health.
There is enough anecdotal evidence to suggest that some INDIVIDUALS have trouble coping with the effects of active wind turbines (flicker, infrasound, possible stray electric currents). I note that the Madison county Board of Public Health recommends changes to the setbacks of FUTURE wind turbine projects.
Your best bet may be to seek redress in the courts. It is unfortunate that our study was not supported by enough residents of Huron County, some of which allegedly encouraged non participation in the study…
Maarten Bokhout, MD, etc. a/MOH
Stan Thayer
The article is missing the point on this one.
Any of the Large Renewable Projects have a cost estimate and a projected Return On Investment projection which is used to decipher possible profit takeouts.
As in most financial endeavours, an amount is induced to create a situation that should cause a profit generating outcome. The actual windmill is simply a link in the chain of procedure that must happen to enable the flow from expenditure to dividend.
Along that chain, participants takeout their expected, “cut”. No one invested in that chain wants it broken before their link is added.
During the initial proposal development such topics as environmental demise or human health impacts or, “collateral damage”, might be mentioned but usually are not included in the final draft.
To create profit is to create loss. Financial physics 101.
This is not my point of view!
It is the industrial Capitalistic society I live in.
The Renewable Energy Sector is exciting and necessary but the shameful greed and arrogance by some has caused world wide distress that could easily have been avoided with simply a bit less immediate profits.
Like coal, common sense is a thing of the past!
Stan Thayer
Enlighten
The above overview about this wind project is very misleading and full of disinformation (why?).
Firstly, there is a need in some parts of Ontario for more electricity and specifically in the Leamington area to support industry growth; Refer to Hydro One’s “Supply to Essex County Transmission Reinforcement Project Overview” and “2018-Windsor-Essex-Scoping-Assessment-Outcome-Report.pdf” and “Need for Bulk Transmission Reinforcement in the Windsor-Essex Region.pdf June 13, 2019” which all confirm the need for more electricity in this area. To that, the province is currently spending over $500 million on bringing more electricity to this area…so why not support companies like EDF that are spending private dollars in place of our tax dollars to achieve this objective?
Further more, the above summary claims that this project will cost “electricity consumers $260 million over its 20-year contract”, but it does’t tell you the project is selling electricity for half the amount the province re-sells the electricity. This project is NOT subsidized and offers some of the lowest cost electricity in the province. Why is this website so determined to mislead Ontairons about what is really happening? If I was to guess, I would assume this website is funded by the fossil fuel or nuclear sector. sad
Wind Concerns Ontario
We are not sure why you are commenting now on a post from the fall of 2019, but the inaccuracies in your comment must be addressed. Your characterization of EDF as some kind of saintly enterprise “spending private dollars in place of our tax dollars” indicates that you are uninformed as to the structure of the Large Renewable Procurement (LRP) program, which was discontinued—not by the Ford government but by the Wynne government at the end of 2016, with a statement to the effect that Ontario has enough power for the foreseeable future, and that Ontario’s power supply is 90% emissions-free. Similarly, your comment that the project in question is selling power to Ontario for half what the province then resells it on the electricity market is completely false. Last Easter weekend, Ontario lost $43 million paying for constrained (paid for but not used) wind power; surplus power was sold at a loss.
The Auditor General said in a report several years ago that Ontario’s wind power contracts are “above market” and that in fact ratepayers had overpaid for electricity by at least $9.2B.
Somehow, your pro-wind ideology as opposed to actual cost-benefit analysis makes this OK with you; it’s not for us.
As to your baseless allegation (coming from someone with a phoney name for an email address) that we are funded by the fossil fuel sector, again, ignorance: Ontario does not use oil for power generation but we do use natural gas. Coal power was not replaced by wind as the mythology goes; coal was replaced by nuclear and natural gas. And we are not funded by anyone except our own members.
If you are looking to read some analysis on all this, we recommend the paper “Ontario’s high cost millstone” published by the Council for Clean Reliable Energy.
JN
The wind turbines have not been going for the past 3-4 weeks.We must not need the electricity?
admin
Which project is it?