Last summer, the Columbia River Gorge straddling the Oregon and Washington borders experienced a particularly hot and static bout of weather.
With little wind blowing, the gorge’s many wind turbines produced only a fraction of their 3,000 megawatts (MW) of energy capacity.
At the same time, the tip of Vancouver Island, which is the future home of Sea Breeze Power Corp.’s 100-megawatt Knob Hill wind farm, was hit with gale-force winds.
In those contrasting weather patterns, Sea Breeze CEO Paul Manson saw a potential solution to one of wind energy’s greatest weaknesses: its inability to generate reliable energy.
Vancouver-based Sea Breeze (TSX-V:SBX) released a study last week validating Manson’s idea: Sea Breeze found that a single reliable source of wind energy could be created by combining variable wind energy from Vancouver Island with variable wind energy in the Columbia River Gorge.
“You have a very interesting situation where at pretty well any time – and there may be gaps – you have these wind regimes predictably complementing each other,” Manson told Business in Vancouver.
The study used data from Sea Breeze, the public domain and Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), a major Pacific Northwest utility whose power lines carry the gorge’s wind energy.
Significantly, Sea Breeze found in the study that in the peak-energy winter months, when the gorge’s winds aren’t blowing (due to its inland location), Vancouver Island’s coastal winds are blowing strongly.
“I’m not negating the value of BPA’s own wind energy,” said Manson. “It’s just that on a seasonal basis our wind energy fits their demand better.”
The company is using the study’s findings as ammunition as it attempts to build a 550 MW high-voltage undersea transmission cable connecting Vancouver Island and Washington state’s Olympic Peninsula.
The Juan de Fuca cable is largely meant to deliver Vancouver Island’s large potential energy supplies to power-hungry U.S. markets, particularly California.
But Manson said Sea Breeze’s study suggests that B.C. and Washington could work together to package a reliable, and therefore sellable, source of wind energy.
“You can then, with a higher level of certainly, sign a contract with a utility in California with the assurance that your wind energy will be there to deliver,” said Manson.
“You will have a reasonably stable product that can be exported from the entire region to California.”
Doug Johnson, a BPA spokesman, said that nearly all of the wind energy connected to BPA’s network of open-access multi-state lines is generated in the Columbia River Gorge.
Accessing power from other Pacific Northwest wind regimes would help increase wind energy’s predictability.
“When you have 3,000 MW of wind energy in one area, more than 1,000 MW can suddenly disappear – and you have to make that up as it disappears,” said Johnson.
Combining power sources to create reliable energy supplies is not a new concept, but predictable hydroelectricity is almost always the energy used to complement less reliable energies.
Hydroelectricity is currently the only energy source that BPA uses to balance the wind power flowing into its lines.
Wind energy producers and their customers pay BPA’s balancing fees.
In exchange, BPA guarantees those producers and customers additional hydroelectricity if the wind turbines are inactive.
And if the wind turbines are operating at full capacity, BPA reduces its hydroelectric load to allow wind energy full access to its lines.
With wind energy capacity in the Columbia River Gorge potentially doubling to 6,000 MW by 2013, BPA is looking for various ways to ensure that such a concentrated and unpredictable supply of wind power doesn’t disrupt its transmission network.
“Wind energy has some behavioural issues that make it difficult from time to time,” said Johnson. “[But] wind is an incredibly valuable resource.”
Sea Breeze’s study is moot until it gets its transmission cable operational on the sea floor and its wind turbines at Knob Hill rotating.
It’s in final negotiations with International Power Canada Inc. over ownership and construction of Knob Hill’s Phase 1 development.
If that deal closes soon, Manson said Sea Breeze could break ground at Knob Hill in spring and have the wind farm operational at the end of 2012. The Juan de Fuca cable is fully permitted.
To begin construction, Sea Breeze is applying to the U.S.’s Department of Energy for a loan guarantee that will likely be around US$300 million.