Powering the North

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LEVERAGING LEGACIES, PIONEERING THE FUTURE

[mk_dropcaps style=”simple-style”]T[/mk_dropcaps]HIS PAST DECEMBER, Andrew Hall, president of Yukon Energy, announced that the territory’s publicly owned utility was starting work to select a site for a new five to 10-megawatt wind farm to meet growing electricity demand. “Wind is a valuable option in our energy tool box,” Hall said in unveiling the project. “It is renewable, can be developed in a reasonable time, and is scalable. We see this as an appropriate mid-scale solution to meet the territories mid-term electricity needs.”

History buffs might have enjoyed a quiet chuckle at the time. In the 1980s, both the federal and territorial governments had tested wind power in various Yukon locations and written off its potential, leaving testing equipment to gather dust. If not for the efforts of two pioneering individuals — Doug Craig, a geological engineer, and Jack Cable, a chemical engineer who would go on to become president of Yukon Energy — no one might have discovered that the equipment had frozen up during some of those testing programs and delivered useless results.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][mk_image src=”https://energy-exchange.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/1G8A6196.jpg” image_width=”800″ image_height=”600″ crop=”true” lightbox=”false” frame_style=”simple” target=”_self” title=”The Diavik Diamond Mine is now
 using wind turbines to help power its operations, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. ” desc=”COURTESY DIAVIK” caption_location=”inside-image” align=”left” margin_bottom=”10″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text disable_pattern=”true” align=”left” margin_bottom=”0″]Craig and Cable’s subsequent efforts to get correct data eventually led to the commissioning of the Haeckel Hill wind farm near Whitehorse in 1993, an installation that delivers electricity to this day.

For all the imagery 
of punishing blizzards
and windswept bar
rens, one might think wind power would be a natural fit for the North. In reality, it has had a difficult history, notably in Nunavut where a handful of pilot projects in the 2000s failed for reasons ranging from unmanageable maintenance in Arctic conditions to tower collapses and lightning strikes.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_column_text disable_pattern=”true” align=”left” margin_bottom=”0″]But projects such as Haeckel Hill proved it could be done. And the concept got a powerful shot in the arm in 2010, when the Diavik Diamond Mine unveiled an ambitious $33-million program to construct a four-turbine wind farm at its central Arctic operation.

Given its remote location, the Diavik mine relies on diesel to generate electricity. It burns roughly 50 million litres a year, all of which must be shipped to the site via a seasonal ice road that opens for only a few weeks each winter. It’s a major operational cost for the mine and one that contributes to its greenhouse-gas emissions. Thus, the desire to move the bar.

Although Diavik’s project was announced in 2010, work had started about three years earlier with a testing program to measure the wind resource. Construction began in 2011, with staggering logistics. Moving the materials to the mine site required sending 60 truckloads over the ice road. The blades for the windmills themselves — at 32 metres long and weighing 6.5 tonnes each — were the largest loads ever hauled over the route.[/vc_column_text][mk_blockquote style=”line-style” font_family=”none” text_size=”22″ align=”left”]When the mine closes, there’s the possibility it will donate its turbines to communities in the N.W.T.[/mk_blockquote][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/3″][mk_image src=”https://energy-exchange.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/1G8A4269.jpg” image_width=”800″ image_height=”350″ crop=”false” lightbox=”false” frame_style=”simple” target=”_self” desc=”COURTESY DIAVIK” caption_location=”inside-image” align=”left” margin_bottom=”10″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_column_text disable_pattern=”true” align=”left” margin_bottom=”0″]The Diavik wind farm came online in September of 2012 and is now a component of the world’s most northern wind-diesel hybrid power generation system. And it is living up to ambitious expectations. In 2013, its first full year of operation, the facility supplied 8.5 per cent of the mine’s electricity demand, displacing the need to burn 3.8 million litres of diesel fuel and reducing greenhouse gas emissions by more than 10,000 tonnes. At the end of the first half of 2014, it was on track to deliver 10 per cent of the mine’s electricity for the year and reduce diesel consumption by five per cent.

Those are impressive numbers. But the impact of the Diavik wind farm goes beyond performance metrics and cost savings. The mine has already donated its wind measurement equipment to a Yellowknife-based project to use in other studies. When the mine closes some time in the 2020s, there’s also the possibility it may be able to donate its turbines to communities in the N.W.T. Most important of all, though, Diavik has proved that wind power can work in the harshest northern conditions — a lesson that, along with examples such as Haeckel Hill, has helped keep wind power on the table in northern energy planning.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][mk_button dimension=”three” size=”large” outline_skin=”dark” outline_active_color=”#fff” outline_hover_color=”#333333″ bg_color=”#13bdd2″ text_color=”light” icon=”moon-next” url=”/powering-the-north/3/” target=”_self” align=”right” fullwidth=”false” margin_top=”0″ margin_bottom=”15″ animation=”scale-up”]Next Page[/mk_button][vc_column_text disable_pattern=”true” align=”left” margin_bottom=”0″]