TransAlta announces Blue Trail wind power project
Located four kilometres from Fort Macleod, the wind farm will incorporate 22, three-MW wind turbines. Once complete, the Blue Trail wind farm will provide an annual average of 195,000 megawatt hours per year - enough electricity to meet the needs of approximately 29,000 homes.
"Wind power is a key resource for meeting the demand for competitively priced, and environmentally sustainable electricity in the Alberta market," said Steve Snyder, TransAlta's President and CEO. "This project will be ready to be commissioned by December 2009, which will help alleviate some of the supply concerns in our home market."
"Blue Trail supports TransAlta's drive toward capitalizing on growth opportunities in our core western markets - through the addition of high-quality wind, small hydro, geothermal and co-generation assets to its generation portfolio. The project meets TransAlta's return thresholds and is consistent with the company's capital allocation plan," Mr. Snyder added.
Delivery of the V90 turbines from Vestas is scheduled to begin mid-2009. TransAlta will work with local firms during construction. The project is subject to regulatory and environmental approvals.
The announcement of the Blue Trail wind power project follows TransAlta's announcement of the 96 MW Kent Hills wind farm, located in New Brunswick.
TransAlta also owns and/or operates the Castle River, McBride Lake and Summerview wind farms in southern Alberta. The addition of the Blue Trail wind power project brings TransAlta's total net wind-generated capacity to 314 MW.
Related News
How Bitcoin's vast energy use could burst its bubble
LONDON - The University of Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF) studies the burgeoning business of cryptocurrencies.
It calculates that Bitcoin's total energy consumption is somewhere between 40 and 445 annualised terawatt hours (TWh), with a central estimate of about 130 terawatt hours.
The UK's electricity consumption is a little over 300 TWh a year, while Argentina uses around the same amount of power as the CCAF's best guess for Bitcoin.
And the electricity the Bitcoin miners use overwhelmingly comes from polluting sources.
The CCAF team surveys the people who manage the Bitcoin network around the world on their energy use and found that…
