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The wind turbine, to be mounted on an 24-metre tower, will
supply part of the electricity to one of centre's
buildings, said Paul Pynn, an engineer with the company.
"We did some wind analysis for about a year," he
said Friday. "It's not (a really windy) place, but
it's not bad."
Atlantic Orient Canada, established in 1995, builds and
sells its small industrial wind turbines worldwide. They
are most often used to generate electricity for farms,
schools, community centres, industrial buildings and
remote communities, Mr. Pynn said.
But the company has yet to sell one in Nova Scotia.
"We are going to put up our own (in Woodside). We are
tired of waiting for someone to buy one," Mr. Pynn
said after an address at DalTech Thursday evening.
The company is erecting the wind turbine for marketing
purposes, research and development, and training.
"We are going to develop a training course around it.
People who want to sell our turbines around the world -
they will send their technical people here, and we'll put
them through a week-long training course," he said.
Mr. Pynn spoke about the current state and future trends
of the wind industry at Thursday's public event, sponsored
by the Canadian Atlantic section of the Institute of
Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
"Wind energy is right now the fastest-growing energy
source in the world," he said. "The annual
compound growth of the wind industry has been 30 per cent
over the last several years."
Germany, Spain, the U.S. and Denmark lead the way when it
comes to using wind to generate electricity, he said.
Canada's largest wind farm is in the Gaspe, Que., although
this country has several other wind farms, including one
in Alberta and one in Prince Edward Island.
It was announced earlier this month that Pubnico, Yarmouth
County, will be home to Nova Scotia's first commercial
wind farm.
Atlantic Orient Canada has sold wind turbines in India,
Ireland, Scotland, the U.S., Nunavut and Northern Ontario.
It sells a large number in the U.K., where big subsidies
exist for businesses and individuals that produce
electricity using renewable energy sources, Mr. Pynn said.
"(Incentives) are starting in Canada, but they are
certainly not the same level as the U.K.," he said.
The company sees a large market in Canada's North, where
there are 300 remote communities that are not on a power
grid and depend on expensive diesel generators to provide
all their electricity.
"They have got lots of wind. . . . I think in the
next couple of years in Canada, you will see as lot of
wind turbines go up North," he said.
But Mr. Pynn said that even in Nova Scotia, some
businesses could benefit by using a wind turbine for
electricity.
"There are businesses in Nova Scotia - for example, a
fish plant down on the coast, a good, windy site,
consuming a lot of power, they could use our size wind
turbine," he said.
"For the whole thing, by the time you get your
foundation and get the electrician to do the hookup and
all that (the cost is) somewhere around $140,000."
Worldwide, wind power is getting cheaper every year as
large wind turbines become larger and more efficient, Mr.
Pynn said.
Atlantic Orient Canada has recently been involved a
project in rural India. It has installed 10 of its wind
turbines on Sagar Island, West Bengal.
"There are these remote communities in developing
countries where there is a huge push for rural
electrification," he said.
"They will never be on a main grid, so they have to
produce the power with diesel generators, which are very
expensive to transport and store and inefficient.
"There is a real push to add renewables - solar and
wind - to these projects."
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