Offshore wind makes sense.
Results from existing offshore wind farms and wind data specific to The Great Lakes confirm that wind over water is a more powerful and reliable source of energy than wind over land. Trillium Power is ready to take action on the significant offshore wind opportunities in Ontario and The Great Lakes region.
Offshore vs. onshore wind farms
While offshore and onshore wind rely on the same input - wind - their performance capabilities are very different. The use of larger turbines in offshore wind farms, combined with stronger and more consistent winds over water, results in significantly higher capacity factors, thus more abundant, reliable and economical energy production than can be generated on land.
Offshore wind developments can also be closer to coastal cities thereby simplifying transmission and transportation issues that often create expensive logistical difficulties for onshore wind farms located in remote areas.
Furthermore, offshore wind farms sufficiently distant from shore tend not to meet with the same degree of public resistance arising from visual impacts, noise production, shadow casting or removal of land from existing or planned land uses that onshore wind projects typically face.
Trillium Power's first site, Trillium Power Wind 1 (TPW1), will be located 17 to 28 km from shore. It won’t be heard and will be virtually invisible from the land thereby avoiding any possible concerns regarding visual aesthetics and potential impacts on property values. It will also be efficiently formatted to minimize any avian impacts and will actually benefit the regeneration of certain species of fish.
Offshore wind vs. coal and gas-fired generation
Offshore wind is clearly preferable to coal or gas electricity generation as they both rely on polluting, non-renewable sources of fuel. They emit toxins such as carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, sulphur dioxide, mercury, particulate matter and volatile organic compounds into the air and place high demands on resources such as freshwater.
Coal has been a major source of electricity in North America for many years and is the worst of the carbon-based options. There are currently 155 coal-fired plants operating in The Great Lakes region that regularly discharge contaminants into poorly-contained holding ponds and nearby waterways. Of the 155 existing plants, 87 exceeded their pollution limits at least once in the past 3 years, some discharging up to 20 times the legal limit according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The high level of carbon pollution from coal has rendered it the baseline against which carbon reduction is measured. Coal generation creates 0.9 kg of carbon per kilowatt hour of electricity produced. This is just one reason that the Government of Ontario is wisely phasing out coal as a source of electricity by 2014.
Offshore wind vs. nuclear generation
Recent cost estimates by Wall Street, including Moody's, Standard and Poor's and Lazard Ltd., indicate that nuclear power is the most costly of all forms of carbon-based sources and more costly than efficiency and energy derived from cogeneration, biomass, geothermal, solar thermal and wind.
Citing excessive costs and the failure of the bidding process to offer up a suitable option, the Ontario government announced in July of 2009 that it would be postponing a $20 billion nuclear upgrade project.
Furthermore, capital cost estimates of nuclear power in Ontario have often been unreasonably low. The Ontario Power Authority's most recent analysis of the capital cost of a new CANDU 6 reactor (C$2,845/kW) is 30% less than the actual historic capital cost (C$4,085/kW in 1993) of the Darlington nuclear station, Ontario's newest plant.
When one also considers the escalating cost of uranium, the fact nuclear fission produces highly radioactive waste that requires storage for tens of thousands of years, that nuclear facilities have higher staff and maintenance costs than other generation sources, wind power is clearly the more viable and environmentally friendly option.
And unlike nuclear, wind offers a decentralized energy source. One nuclear plant requiring unscheduled maintenance can take 1,200 MW from the grid - an unlikely scenario in the offshore wind model where each turbine generates no more than 5 MW of energy.