Wind & Water
A hybrid project blending wind turbines with hydro power will generate green energy from Cape Breton
Last Christmas, Luciano Lisi burst out laughing when he unwrapped a present and found a pair of pyjamas with the words "It's All About Me" patterned across the bottoms. The gregarious native of Florence, Italy, is used to being in the limelight, mainly because of his outgoing manner and ready wit. These days he is sharing the spotlight with the latest project destined to put Cape Breton on the North American renewable energy map.
Lisi's project is about finding a solution to one of the biggest challenges facing Nova Scotia's energy industry: how to bring more renewable energy into the mix. As the CFO of Glace Bay, N.S.–based Cape Breton Power Ltd., Lisi already has a track record of building wind farms. His last project has a capacity of 17 megawatts produced by nine wind turbines, seven of which are located at its Lingan wind farm. He is now starting Cape Breton Hydro Ltd., which is planning to build a 200-megawatt hybrid wind hydro-power development on Lake Uist in southern Cape Breton that includes 44 wind turbines and two hydro-power generators. To place that in perspective, the total of all Nova Scotia's wind power to date is 60 megawatts produced by 41 wind turbines.
Cape Breton Power's Luciano Lisi: bringing renewable energy into the mix with a new project.
"This project is actually 10 times bigger than anything we've done before," says Lisi, "and our ambition is that our next project will be 10 times bigger than this." There is a pause before Lisi adds in his mellifluous Italian accent: "That was a joke. It is always important to keep a sense of humour in life."
All joking aside, the hybrid wind hydro "pumped storage generating facility," as it's known, proposes a visionary solution to several challenges that the province's electric-generation industry has faced. The biggest one is that Nova Scotia generates more than 70% of its electricity by burning coal, which produces vast amounts of harmful greenhouse gases and poses an economic risk, since power prices would rise if the federal government were to impose carbon penalties on industry.
To deal with this issue, Nova Scotia has been erecting wind farms to produce wind-powered electricity, but when the wind stops, wind turbines stop producing electricity. And since wind can cease, a backup power source has to be on standby, which means that coal/oil-fired plants must be idling, producing emissions even though they're not producing electricity. That, in turn, means wind power is not achieving its full environmental benefit.
When the Cape Breton Hydro hybrid project opens, which it is expected to do in 2010, some of that will change. The hybrid project will feature 44 wind turbines dutifully cranking out electricity for consumers during the peak hours, but during the night, when there is low demand for electricity, the wind power will be used to pump water up to an elevated reservoir above Lake Uist, so its water can be fed into two 50-megawatt hydro turbines.
The combination of hydro and wind power produces a constant 100% green power source. And here is the beauty of the project: the hydro generators can be operational within 60 seconds, so the facility can back up not just these new wind turbines but others as well, and there is less need for idling coal/oil-fired plants to be belching out emissions. "The biggest contribution that this project will make is stabilization," says Lisi. "It will stabilize the power that comes from wind."
Though the project is still in its infancy, it is drawing plaudits from a range of experts in the energy and financial sectors. It is not the first hydro storage generation project (a power plant that pumps water uphill to be used for hydro power) in North America, but it is the first to use green power to pump the water uphill. "It is one of the most innovative green energy projects in this region," says Scott Urquhart, the vice-president of corporate finance at Halifax–based Acadian Securities Inc., which is working with Cape Breton Hydro on financing the development. "It's a blending of technologies already used in other parts of the world, especially in Europe."
The site is ideal. First, it has the elevated lake and a ready source of "wind resource," meaning that a strong wet wind blows steadily there. In addition, the location has been clear-cut forested for decades, so there is limited environmental sensitivity for the area. And those who live nearby are generally supportive and will not be affected by the sight or sound of the wind turbines. Finally, Nova Scotia Power Corp. transmission lines cross right above the site, which means there will be little trouble hooking up the power-generation facility to the provincial grid.
Cape Breton Hydro plans to sell some of the power generated by the project to the local market and export the rest to New England, where there are higher utility rates. The rates are unlikely to fall anytime soon, as United States' electricity consumption is forecast to rise 25% by 2030 while its production is predicted to increase roughly 10%.
Cape Breton Hydro has already begun to line up the team to put the project together. It has hired Sydney, N.S.–based engineering firm CBCL to oversee the various subcontractors providing engineering, design, environmental assessment, and feasibility services. It has also asked GE Hydro, Toshiba, Hitachi, Mitsubishi, and Voith Siemens to submit proposals on installing the hydro generators. Cape Breton Hydro will use world class Enercon wind turbines, a German manufacturer the company already has a relationship with.
Lisi and his colleagues hope to have the wind component of the project operating by the summer of 2009 and to commission the hydro-generation plant in the summer of 2010. Could it be the first of several green hydro-storage projects in Nova Scotia? Lisi won't say—not even to joke that he knows of one site that could house a project 10 times as large as this one.
— Peter Moreira
photography by Sandor Fizli
