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Horseshoe Nails & Bowhead Whales
with Bill Gawor
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
Halfway up the hill to Rankin's garbage dump, a row of power poles stops abruptly.
This is all that remains of the original project to harness the wind with 14 turbines.
With so many windmills, the cost of the farm was estimated to pay for itself in just under 10 years.
Not all of the community's electrical needs would have been met, but, based on a similar project in Kotzebue, Alaska, Rankin's power plant expected a 17 per cent reduction in fuel per year.
Contrary to popular belief, wind turbines cannot replace diesel-generated electricity.
They can only help supplement it.
When the airport got wind of the project, it was pointed out that not only would the windmill towers be in the flight corridor of incoming aircraft, but the turbines would also disrupt radio signals.
So, the project was drastically scaled down and moved to Nipisar Lake, which is hinterland-zoned.
Of the original 14 windmills, one ended up in Rankin, two in Kugluktuk and a couple may have found their way to Cambridge Bay.
Cambridge actually holds the honour of having the first official windmill farm in Canada.
What happened to the rest is anyone's guess.
Rankin's lone wind turbine was troubled from the start.
It was a reject from Iqaluit because it lacked the wind to operate such a device.
It arrived with parts missing and had to be drastically modified to meet our harsh weather conditions.
So, it was rewired and its ball bearings replaced with stainless-steel ones, but all to no avail.
The windmill that was touted as being able to supply electricity for 25 to 30 households barely moved in the summer, let alone in the winter when power demands were at their peak.
Replacement parts could never be found as the manufacturer was only interested in selling complete units, not supplying parts.
Dedicated operating staff needed for its success soon lost interest and the project was abandoned.
In Kugluktuk, one windmill was toppled by the wind and the other was fried by lightning.
The cannibalized parts were supposedly sent to Cambridge Bay as spare parts for its wind turbines.
It's hard to imagine that, before the Second World War, windmills were common on the flat, barren tundra.
Almost every trading and RCMP post had one.
According to Norman Ford Sr., wind generators were available from a catalogue for about $100 or four or five prime fox skins. In the beginning, they were used to power a few lights and the Morse code wireless.
Later on, radio messages and world news were broadcast to the Arctic from some place in the States, since reception was superior from that one location than anywhere in Canada. Today, diesel is still the cheapest method we have of providing electricity in the Arctic, but for how long?
With crude oil approaching $100 a barrel, the Nunavut Power Corp. should be encouraged to keep experimenting with wind farms.
The feds should provide funding and Arctic College could get involved in researching and developing a made-in-Nunavut wind turbine.
The irony is that the wind farm in Kotzebue, Alaska, is all Canadian technology.
It works there, but not in Nunavut. Now that says something about our weather. When a windmill self-destructs due to gale force winds and the one beside it gets hit by lightning, that shows wind machines from the south don't have a chance.
They must be built for, and by, Northerners.
We must become more self-reliant and independent of the outside.
Hey, it's either that or go nuclear!