Brian Zinchuk is editor and owner of Pipeline Online
Andria Brady, one of the more vocal opponents to the project, asks a question on Dec. 11. Photo by Brian Zinchuk
Editor’s note: This story ended up being so massive, it needed to be broken up into several parts just to make it manageable and yet still allow a great deal of depth on a topic very important to Weyburn. On top of that, there is a LOT going on in the power space right now, with the Tuesday release of the revised Clean Electricity Regulations and on the same day as the grand opening of the Great Plains Power Station at Moose Jaw which Pipeline Online attended. There’s a lot of catching up to do, so please bear with me. Here’s Enbridge’s Weyburn wind project open house, Part 1: Setting the stage:
WEYBURN – It was a contrite Enbridge which presented a second open house in Weyburn for its planned 200 megawatt wind project, to be located east of the community. The project has seen several revisions, and Enbridge representatives repeatedly spoke about correcting mistakes and working with people affected by the proposed project.
The event took place at Weyburn’s McKenna Hall the evening of Wednesday, Dec. 11. It was a much larger forum than the feisty and somewhat crowded initial open house that took place on July 17 in a hotel meeting room. There were 15 Enbridge representatives or consultants present, including sound and health experts brought in for the occasion. The session started with an hour for attendees to talk to those representatives at various updated posterboards around the room, followed by a brief presentation and a question and answer session that went for an hour and 45 minutes. Pipeline Online counted 132 people during the latter portion, although there were several people that only attended the first portion and added to the overall number of attendees.
The announcement of a major wind project on the outskirts of Weyburn in June took some people by surprise and has led to a vocal backlash by some people. They have a Facebook page called Stop Seven Stars Energy Windmills near Weyburn, and there are numerous signs posted throughout the project area and in Weyburn proper voicing opposition to the project. Several attendees to the December open house wore shirts with logos showing a circle and red stripe banning wind turbines.
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The project in question is a 200 megawatt wind facility intended to be built immediately east of Weyburn. The project will entail 46 Vestas model V163 wind turbines, with a hub eight of 98 metres and a rotor diameter of 163 metres. That’s a total height of about 179 metres, or 590 feet. These numbers are a revision from what was shown in July, with a reduction in both hub height and total height. The original presentation indicated the hub could be up to 120 metres and total height up to 205 metres, or 673 feet. Each turbine would have a nameplate capacity of 4.5 megawatts.
One of the posterboards presented on Dec. 11. Note the dimensions have changed since July. Enbridge
The Seven Stars Energy Project was announced on June 21. First and foremost, SaskPower is not the developer or owner of the project. SaskPower’s part is that of a power purchaser – to buy all the power from the planned facility at agreed upon rates through a power purchase agreement. SaskPower has explicitly said it does not pay when no power is produced from such renewable energy projects.
The provincial government did, however, announce on June 24 it would provide up to $100 million in loan guarantees to six Indigenous partners to support their investment in Enbridge’s new renewable wind energy project southeast of Weyburn. (More on this later)
This is the revised layout, as of Dec. 11, of the Seven Stars Energy project near Weyburn. There’s a substantial shift of the turbine layout to the east. Enbridge
This December realignment will produce many winners, and losers, depending on one’s point of view, should the project go ahead. For those who don’t want turbines anywhere near them, moving turbines might be considered a win. But for those who would have benefited from 30 years of lease and royalty payments, it could be a big loss. And for those totally opposed to the very idea of a large scale wind project, the very idea of any turbines being built could also be considered a loss. But those who would see economic benefit from the project, including businesses and municipal taxbases, it would be a win.
What was also clear is the project is still not in final form, either, so there may be more winners and losers as it continues to evolve.
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The shift in locations also means many of the proposed turbines would be relocated outside of the RM of Weyburn to the RM of Griffin, substantially reducing the taxes payable to the RM of Weyburn and increasing them to the RM of Griffin. Specifically, eight turbines moved from the RM of Weyburn to a more remote area in the RM of Griffin.
The Enbridge substation would be located on Township Road 80, west of its intersection with Range Road 2131 and near the SaskPower transmission line.
The project timeline has also been substantially extended, postponing construction by another 8 to 10 months.
The open house reflected substantial changes in the proposed layout, which still is not finalized. Most substantial of that is the relocation of many of the proposed sites eastward. As an example, the July layout showed 19 possible turbine locations (including several alternates) to the west of the SaskPower transmission line that runs on large pylons from Boundary Dam Power Station to Regina. This included the closest locations to Weyburn proper, as well as several homes and acreages in the northwest.
Now the current number of locations west of the power line is just nine, with the bulk of the proposed sites to the east of the powerline and along Township Road 80, roughly 3 miles north and three miles northeast of Ralph. Pipeline Online spent several hours driving through the proposed project area on Dec. 11. The concentrated turbine area has next to no residences, and the largely barren landscape is dominated by small pumpjacks.
These changes are a reflection of the new buffer rule the project is running under – no turbine will be located closer than 1,500 metres (just shy of a mile) to a residence unless they sign off on it. Even then, the closest site would still have a 1,000 metre buffer.
The sound expert who Enbridge brought in, professional engineer Shant Dokouzian, told Pipeline Online he’d never seen buffers of that scale in his 18 years of working on wind projects. He’s spent 15 years modelling and measuring sound. And this was noted during the Q&A session.
NEXT: Opening comments from Enbridge
The posterboards presented by Enbridge, such as the one in this story, will all be republished throughout this series of stories.
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