Business in Vancouver August 29-September 4, 2006; issue 879

Wind now set for B.C. sales

Hydo: 38 contracts awarded. Trio of energy companies to sink $650 million into wind farm projects

Krisendra Bisetty

Investors are throwing caution to the wind, hoping one of the world’s fastest-growing electricity sources will generate positive returns in British Columbia.

B.C. is set to catch up with the rest of Canada – and other parts of the world – in 2009 when its first commercial wind farms are scheduled to harness the resource.

More than 150 wind turbines are being ordered by three B.C. energy companies for farms that would require a total investment of approximately $650 million.

“We’ve been preparing for this for three years, and it’s taken three years to develop the certainty required for this type of wind project,” said Ron Percival, president of Victoria-based Dokie Wind Energy Inc., a joint venture between Percival’s Earth First Energy Inc. and Creststreet Capital Corp., an investment management firm out of Toronto and Calgary.

If built today, the Dokie project, at 180-megawatt capacity, would be Canada’s largest wind farm, said Percival, delivering enough wind energy each year – 536 gigawatt hours – to BC Hydro to power a city of about 50,000 people.

“It’s a great development for clean wind energy in British Columbia,” said Percival. “And the greenhouse gas offsets from the project are equivalent to taking about 40,000 cars off the road a year.”

Dokie Wind’s investors have thus far ploughed $3.5 million into the venture.

The proposed farm, 40 kilometres west of Chetwynd, will use existing transmission lines from the nearby WAC Bennett Dam.

Within days of its successful tender to Hydro, which awarded 38 contracts to independent power producers in late July, Dokie Wind cleared a second major hurdle when it was won B.C. environment certification for the project.

Dokie and the other successful bidders are expected to sign energy purchase agreements with Hydro on August 28 for long-term electricity supply. With the average cost of wind projects in Canada about $2 million a megawatt installed, the Dokie project will be in the region of $360 million, said Percival.

About 60 per cent of that total will be invested in wind turbines, but global demand from manufacturers means that orders are not likely to be filled until late 2008, a year before Hydro’s deadline for all the 38 projects to be on line.

Aeolis Wind Power Corp.’s 120 megawatt Bear Mountain Wind Park, a 47-50 per cent limited partnership between the Victoria company and Calgary-based AltaGas Income Trust, calls for 60 turbines of two megawatts each. The proposed farm will be located within 15 kilometres of Dawson Creek and has participation from a local investment co-operative, the Peace Energy Co-op, which has a three per cent stake in the venture.

“We got quite extensive support from the Dawson Creek city council and community,” said Aeolis vice-president for project development T.J. Schur.

The $240 million project, which will provide enough electricity for about 38,000 homes, is still in the environmental assessment stage, said Schur, who is confident it will be financially viable. Meanwhile, a much smaller $50 million, 14-turbine, 25.2-megawatt wind farm on Kaien Island, overlooking the city of Prince Rupert, is being planned by the Mount Hays Wind Farm Limited Partnership, which has as a partner Katabatic Power Corp., an energy company based both in Richmond, B.C., and in San Francisco.

Katabatic’s president and CEO is marine engineer Anthony Duggleby, who was previously chief operating officer of the Sea Breeze Power Corp., a Vancouver company that landed the first environmental permit for a wind farm in B.C. in 2004.

However, Sea Breeze’s massive US$550 million, 450-megawatt Knob Hill Wind Farm project received a blow that year when BC Hydro rejected its proposal, fearing power from a wind farm might not be available when needed most.

  kbisetty@biv.com