The village of Halkirk is home to 122 people, but it will soon be home to the province’s largest wind farm; generating 150 megawatts of power from 83 wind turbines.
Wednesday, the community came together to celebrate the project, what it means for the village, its economy, and Alberta’s environmental and financial future.
“They’re popping up like dandelions,” says Halkirk’s Mayor Dale Kent. “Every day another one’s popping up.”
For Kent, and all Halkirk’s residents, the skyline around their village has remained basically unchanged. That is all changing now. 83 wind turbines are dotting 10,000 hectares around region, and once operational, they’ll generate 150 megawatts of power.
“It’s kind of amazing,” says resident Vera Airey, “but we’re glad we got it.”
Charlie Schilling is also impressed. “Between oil and gas, and now wind power. What’s coming next?”
Wednesday, the village gathered together to celebrate the project and participate in a “blade signing”, in which all members of the community sign the blades of the wind turbines.
There are many country songs written about Alberta’s powerful winds, and now, this community – and the province as a whole – will start seeing the benefits of that resource.
“Power generation, that from my perspective is somewhat majestic on the prairies of Alberta,” explains Brian Vaasjo, of Capital Power, adding this project will be generating clean power.
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“For most of the jurisdictions in North America, they’re pretty much well served in terms of base load generation,” says Vaasjo. “It’s the looking at the environmental side that’s creating government policy and a number of jurisdictions that create the demand for green power, and wind certainly being one of those opportunities.”
Once it’s operational, the wind farm will create enough electricity to power 50,000 homes.
“One of the cornerstones of the economics for this wind farm, is – in addition to providing energy into the Alberta grid and being sold here – the green attributes or the RECs are being sold to a utility in California based on a 20 year contract,” says Vaasjo, who says this particular project would not have been viable with the credits from California. California law states every power company must produce a certain amount of green energy. So, to meet that requirement, one utility chose to buy green credits from Capital Power, used to make the Halkirk wind farm.
Fortunately, Alberta has a lot of wind to go around.
“In Alberta today, there’s 9000 megawatts of power being generated to serve Alberta’s needs, and the capacity for power generation for wind is 900 megawatts, so that’s about 10%,” explains Vaasjo.
“That, on a percentage basis is higher than any other jurisdiction in Canada. So we have a tremendous amount of wind,” he adds.
So far, the project is being hailed as good for the environment, good for business, and good for the local community.
“This is a big day for the county, and I expect probably for the village of Halkirk,” says Councillor Walter Weber, from the County of Paintearth.
“Businesses are really booming. They found out there’s a lot of money out there. These people have to spend money somewhere,” he adds.
“It means a little bit more on the tax base,” Kent agrees. “They built a new facility down on the south-west corner of town… It’s helping the economy for sure.”
“From the construction activity, there’s a tremendous amount of jobs,” confirms Vaasjo. “At peak, we had about 300 people working to build this site… we’ve got 14 full time employment positions here in the local town.”
While Capital Power says wind power does have its drawbacks, the advances in technology in the industry are happening fast, and jurisdictions across North America are quickly coming onboard, and Halkirk is no exception.
“I think it’s an asset to the community,” states Schilling. “This is something new for Halkirk. It puts Halkirk on the map for Alberta.”
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