Controversial wind project gets green light (Grouse Mountain)

[djmk]

this windmill will be seen perfectly from my kitchen and bedroom window in north burnaby. i'm praying they will not put big flashing red lights on top to prevent planes from hitting hit. and i wonder how this will look from the downtown view cones.

one problem of windmills is that they need wind. if you ever get the chance to visit a wind farm, you will often see a bunch of turbines idle. i wonder if this 20% is when the turbines are running or if the 20% is a yearly average. as well, if you view canada's wind atlas ( http://www.windatlas.ca/en/index.php ) vancouver has some pretty crappy wind. This project would make more sense north of vancouver island. furthermore, energy for 400 (some of the time) homes is barely enough cover a new sub division. so the question begets me, why one? why not 5 or 10 or 250?

from where i sit, this project looks rushed and the politicians are scrambling to look green without doing their research.

eduardo88 mentioned nuclear energy as being viable. Nuclear energy is not very efficient when it comes to powering cities. nuclear plants offer a steady stream of energy and it is very expensive to increase of decrease this flow. cities consume different power levels at different times of the day. of course this could be remedied through diversification, but nuclear is still very expensive to build and insure.

i personally like the idea of "clean" coal. the germans have found a way to pump the CO2 back into the earth. and better yet, its cheap. however, when you say coal, people tend to get a bit uptight so i doubt this will ever happen.

[mr.x]

The UK has plans to be 50% wind power dependent, building 8,000+ wind turbines off shore....and these will be massive turbines, as high as 800 feet tall.

[eduardo88]

Originally Posted by geoff's two cents

2) There's the issue of what happens when something goes wrong. Chernobyl is the only large-scale nuclear power disaster I'm aware of, but it's perfectly plausible that an increased appetite for nuclear power, coupled with the fact that there would be human beings in charge of it, could mean another incident of similar magnitude.

This is extremely unlikely to ever happen. Chernobyl happened because of poor construction, poor maintenance, and reckless usage of the reactor there. If properly built, maintained and run by computers with multiple redundancies, there is no reason at all to think that another Chernobyl type accident would ever happen.

[Metro-One]

Ok again, i am extremely tired of the "i have to look at it" mentality of people in Metro Vancouver. If one flashing light on top of a wind turbine 10km to 20km away (if being viewed from Burnaby) keeps you awake at night, then how the hell did you ever fall asleep in the first place? If you can see the top of Grouse Mountain then i am pretty sure you an already see millions of lights from North Vancouver; street lights, car lights, ship lights, ski lift lights, house lights, etc... At night i look directly into an office building that for some reason never turns their lights off, but it doesn't bother me, because i know i live in a city!!!!!!!!! And in a metro area, and the country too, are lights, cars, trains, boats, people, animals, etc... which all make light or noise or something that someone can find irritating, but we live in a city, and thats what happens in a city.

Awg, rant!!!!!! This is the same attitude that pisses me off as when people in Coal Harbour complain about a certain piece of art blocking their view or when people buy a condo above a night club and then complain about the noise!!!!!!

(The best one of that comes from Maple Ridge, where an up scale housing development was built beside the CP tracks and the residents petitioned to have CP stop sounding the train horns at crossing gates because they didn't like the noise.......ummm, hello!!!!!!! The railway had only been there for over 100 years, that should not come as a surprise when you move next to the train tracks!!!!!!)

And this wind turbine should also not come as a surprise when you live in a quickly growing metro area that needs electricity! In fact creating the electricity so close to the city is much more efficient in another overlooked, if you transport electricity from the peace river dam in norther BC to Vancouver large amounts of electricity are lost in the great distance travelled in the transmission lines. With these projects, we avoid loosing all that produced energy.

Ok, done, that felt good!

[djmk]

Originally Posted by Metro-One

And this wind turbine should also not come as a surprise when you live in a quickly growing metro area that needs electricity! In fact creating the electricity so close to the city is much more efficient in another overlooked, if you transport electricity from the peace river dam in norther BC to Vancouver large amounts of electricity are lost in the great distance travelled in the transmission lines. With these projects, we avoid loosing all that produced energy.

i have serious doubts if we need this electricity. it's one tower in a not so windy environment producing insignificant amounts of energy. this is just politics and this windmill is going to stick out like a sore thumb and look stupid.

besides, this is a gross mountain resort initiative. they will set up the turbine and use its power. i want more public consultation if you can see this from richmond.

[Metro-One]

I've already stated why i feel this attitude of constant deliberation and "oh no i can see" is damaging to Vancouver's growth. The future of power is many micro producing plants that feed into one overall system, which will include wind, solar, hydro, gas/coal, nuclear etc... The idea of one big factory producing all of the energy is a dinosauric relic of the past. I am very happy this is going through, oh, i can see the ski hill lights from Richmond too and during the day i can see the ski runs slicing through the mountain area, and those are a much more devastating eyesore than one turbine and they don't produce energy, they waste it.

[djmk]

and one more thing...

that Photovoltaic Project in Lynn Valley will create 9 MW, this project 1.5 MW.

That is a 6x difference.

[Metro-One]

Thats because this is a single turbine, a prototype. When a bunch more are added then we will be in business. And the 9MW figure i am guessing is at full productivity in full sunshine. Many days in North Van are cloudy but windy, the same way many days are also sunny but calm. If we have both then most of our days are covered.

[mr.x]

Originally Posted by djmk

i have serious doubts if we need this electricity. it's one tower in a not so windy environment producing insignificant amounts of energy. this is just politics and this windmill is going to stick out like a sore thumb and look stupid.

besides, this is a gross mountain resort initiative. they will set up the turbine and use its power. i want more public consultation if you can see this from richmond.

You could say the same for the attenna tower atop Seymour...yet we hardly notice it, or are just used to it.

[Metro-One]

Thank you Mr. X, thats the thing, you can say that for almost any tower on top of a mountain, they are nothing new! Radar towers, cell phone towers, Hydro towers that run all across mountains in this province, observation towers, sky lift towers, etc...

[dreambrother808]

I think the wind turbine will look rather cool sitting up there. It could be a landmark of sorts.

Yes, people will complain about things like this. People complain about everything, everywhere.
But it's rather silly to generalize about metro Vancouver when the complaints are most likely
coming from a few individuals or a minority of the population.

[Smooth]

Originally Posted by mr.x2

You could say the same for the attenna tower atop Seymour...yet we hardly notice it, or are just used to it.

There's actually 3 towers on Seymour. That probably proves your own point that nobody notices them.

[ravman]

are there any renderings?

[SpongeG]

^^^ on page 1 of this thread

[LeftCoaster]

Originally Posted by phesto

It will have a viewing platform 190 ft high to accommodate approx. 24 people.

No one has commented on this yet?

This will be a great place to get above the treeline and peer into the back country of the coastal mountains providing some amazing views. This seems like the biggest plus for me, and maybe one of the unspoken reasons for Grouse pushing this project... what better way to get a new 200ft observation tower approved than to disguise it as a wind turbine!

[agrant]

Wow. Seems like a lot of good points here. Very tired, perhaps I'll be repeating someone. So...

One wind turbine is nothing to get excited about. I was in France during the summer and you'll see hundreds of these things. Why not supply all of Grouses power with wind, make it 5. A lot more symbolic I think. Go all the way or don't bother. Why are they now starting to think about building these finally? Is hydro not enough?

[Yume-sama]

Seems more like a cheap way to sell something that is not really THAT practical. 24 capacity? Errm... better hope nobody actually knows it exists or you'll never get up.

[mr.x]

[deasine]

Did you just do that on paint =P

I'm fully in support of this project. It will just show how "innovative" and "green" Vancouverites are actually are especially during the olympics =)

[fever]

Those aren't in the right spot. It should go right on top of the not-so-prominent peak just to the left of where it's shown in both. You can see peak (the run) in both. That's where it is.

I'd expect this will be more for PR than energy. But still it can't hurt. Wind speeds are higher on mountaintops than in valleys, and higher in the winter than in the summer.