Project Spotlight: Nain Wind Project

Nain Wind Project in Newfoundland

Nain Wind Project

A number of remote communities, especially in Canada’s far north have turned to renewable energy as a way to solve many of their energy problems. For these remote communities energy during the winter months come primarily from diesel fuel, which also serves as a source of heating. Transporting huge quantities of diesel to remote Arctic communities is obviously hugely expensive, and communities cannot afford to not have enough to get through the winter. This means having some redundancies built into the system, which increases the annual costs. 

There are a few projects proposed to solve this issue and in this post we’ll look at the Nain Project proposed for Labrador, which although it is not the Northernmost region in Canada is still a remote community. There are a few wind turbines that would generate electricity, which could then be fed into a microgrid, supplying energy for the community of 1100 people. While the diesel that is currently brought in would still be needed for heating and standby energy demand, the wind turbines would help displace a good portion of the diesel used by the community. The current estimate is that building these two wind turbines of 2.3 MW would reduce the overall diesel consumption of the community by 1/3. 

Project details from contractor Westenwind NV

One of the main issues with completing these projects in Arctic regions is that there are a wide range of  conditions that can cause the turbines to freeze up, leading to extensive downtime, and getting equipment repaired is extremely expensive. Parts might not be able to make it to site until the Spring, so the community might not be able to make use of the turbine for months at a time. There has been some development in the area of turbine design, notably using “vibration” based designs that can be mounted at sea, or on floating platforms off-shore. In this instance it is proposed to use on-shore turbines mounted to bed rock on some hills surrounding the community.  

Off-shore wind turbines are generally more expensive than building on-shore, so a small community with limited economic output is likely to benefit most from a lower-cost on-shore option. Reducing overall diesel demand means they can spend more of their funds on the community, realizing the benefits in the spring each year. There are some Northern communities that have setup solar panel arrays instead of wind turbines, but this is a much less consistent resource in the Far North. It is frequently overcast and rainy in most of Atlantic Canada, and because of its Northern latitude this community likely will not receive any sun during the Winter Equinox, as the Sun never truly rises above the horizon. Low average temperatures are actually a benefit to solar panel efficiency, but without adequate solar resources it is difficult to make the business case for solar over wind turbines. 

The North Sea (Located between the UK, Netherlands, Denmark, and Scandinavia) has one of the highest amounts of wind resource on the planet, and provides ample renewable energy to Germany, Denmark, and the UK. For comparison the North Sea has over 2,600 turbines generating a total 100,133 MW.