Isolated communities, mining sites and other industrial outposts want to replace their expensive, polluting diesel generators with hybrid power systems that use wind.
And Quebec's Wind Energy TechnoCentre https://www.eolien.qc.ca is working on a promising solution, a session of the Canadian Wind Energy Association http://www.canwea.ca/ convention in Montreal heard yesterday.
It is focused on a wind-diesel hybrid power system that creates and uses compressed air as a storage system for excess wind-generated energy, the centre's research director Hussein Ibrahim told a session on wind-diesel systems.
When the power is needed, the compressed air is used to "turbocharge" the diesel engine.
Tests undertaken in the community of Tuktoyaktuk, located in the Northwest Territories on the edge of the Beaufort Sea, produced promising results, the session heard.
Fuel costs dropped by 30 per cent, maintenance costs by 50 per cent and almost 849 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions were cut, Ibrahim said.
These are important savings given that fuel has to be flown in, hauled by barge, or trucked over ice to most remote sites.
And the average diesel generator requires 20 maintenance visits a year, Ibrahim said.
The TechnoCentre, a non-profit, government-supported venture located in the Gaspe, plans to build a $1.5 million scale model of its hybrid system by 2012, Ibrahim said.
Interest in the system has already been expressed by Xstrata's Raglan nickel mine in northern Quebec and an Algerian state-owned oil and gas company, he said.
Brett Pingree, vice-president of Americas for Northern Power Systems http://www.northernpower.com/ , told yesterday's session that wind-diesel hybrid systems are increasingly popping up in Australia's outbacks and the U.S. state of Alaska.
But in Russia, development of the hybrid systems has ramped up dramatically and is probably related to oil and gas development, he said.
Technical challenges associated with operating wind turbines in isolated -and usually very cold - environments are many, the conference heard.
Key among them are storage issues; how to store large amounts of energy generated by turbines when the wind is blowing for use later when it is not.
Storage systems include batteries, "flywheels," hydrogen storage tanks and compressed air.
The CanWEA conference and trade exhibition began Monday and drew more than 2,300 participants, organizers said.
lmoore@montrealgazette.com
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