Capstone Infrastructure Corporation, an independent and publicly traded power generating company headquartered in Toronto, has applied to SRD for permitting and approval for a new project on Vancouver Island. The “Brewster Wind Project” would install about 30 wind turbines on a site about 40 km northwest of Campbell River. The proposed site is on some ridges between highways 28 and 19 — more specifically, between the White River and the Memekay River, spanning a range from west of the Memekay Horse Camp to north and east of Memekay Peak.
Capstone is submitting their proposal in response to the 2024 BC Hydro Call For Power. Hydro is soliciting bids with the goal of acquiring about 3000 GWhrs per year of new clean or renewable electricity to serve the region. Capstone’s project, when completed, would produce about 200 MW; they anticipate a 30 year operational lifetime. If everything were to go smoothly, they anticipate a successful environmental impact report by 2028 and completion by 2031; so this project will not be popping up overnight.
Capstone requested that SRD post the relevant information in public, and also asked for advice on a list of stakeholders who should be consulted. SRD responded by advising that Capstone should consult with the BC Speleological Federation, the Canadian Cave Conservancy, the BC Paleontological Alliance, and the Royal BC Museum Palaeontology Department.
Readers may be surprised to see no mention of wildlife conservation agencies or bird watching associations on this list. Wind farms have for decades been the centre of controversy related to the risk to bird populations posed by the large rotating blades. Opponents of wind farm installations often cite bird kill as a primary objection to this renewable energy technology. Perhaps bird watchers, naturalists, ecologists — and the birds themselves — should also be considered as stakeholders in this approval process.
Lively debate continues to this day about the actual numbers of birds killed by wind turbine blades. American estimates vary between 500 and 700 thousand birds per year; in the UK, estimates vary widely from 10K to 100K.
While these numbers sound large, in the UK about 30 million birds are killed annually by domestic cats, and in the US, updated research now suggests that over one billion birds die annually from domestic cat predation. But the cats are only part of the story — in the US, over a billion birds die annually from collisions with buildings and windows. Wind farms, at their current level of build-out, barely register in the overall toll of bird mortality from window strikes, domestic cats, habitat destruction, pollution, etc.
Wind farm operators nevertheless have been subjected to intense criticism and citizen resistance to new projects because of the risk to birds, particularly migratory and coastal birds. Various methods have been suggested for reducing bird/blade collisions, of which the easiest and most effective presently seems to be painting the blades (and possiby the towers) with prominent black and white stripes, or painting one blade black and leaving the others white. Some wind farm operators have installed radar and camera equipment to monitor bird/blade collisions and better understand the problem, and some have tried proximity-triggered audio (such as the cries of predatory birds) to try to warn birds away from the site.
Passions run high on this issue; many see wind power as an essential tool in our attempt to reduce carbon emissions and mitigate the damage and death toll from climate change, while others are just as deeply committed to the preservation of the world’s embattled bird populations — in 2022 a worldwide survey reported that 49 percent of the planet’s bird populations are in decline. One of every 8 bird species worldwide is now considered at risk of extinction.
The wind farm debate pits environmentalist against environmentalist — while the fossil fuel lobby is quite happy to promote negative publicity about wind farms in order to protect its own carbon-intensive market share.
This confusing mixture of sincere activism and fossil industry propaganda may be reaching its end, however, as engineers prototype and test bladeless wind generators.
A small Spanish company called Vortex has been working for several years on a novel wind generator that has no spinning blades. Essentially, the designer has managed to harness the tendency of elastic mechanical linkages (like bendable branches) to oscillate when energised by wind. The form factor is a slim tower which visibly “waggles” its upper structure when the breeze blows, converting that energy to electricity.
Vortex has attracted a lot of interest over the last 5 years or so — in 2021, Norway’s national energy company Equinor called it one of the most exciting startups of the year. Vortex’s first production model is a modest ten foot tower that will generate 100 watts, but they are tooling up to build a 4KW and a 1 MW size.
Another startup, Katrick Technologies in Scotland, has developed a safe, low profile, honeycomb-shaped wind generator with promising specs; it’s being developed and tested at the University of Strathclyde in partnership with Scotland’s Manufacturing Technology Centre.
While the technology is new and not yet in full production, the bladeless wind turbines offer some significant advantages. They have fewer moving parts, require less raw material to manufacture, and are very low maintenance. They have a small footprint and are quieter than spinning blade turbines, as well as being safe for wildlife and humans in the vicinity. They scale well, and are suitable for rooftop installation in inhabited areas as well as large industrial wind farms. While the Vortex tower is significantly less efficient (kw produced per unit of wind velocity), the Katrick development team claim that their design is even more efficient than traditional spinning-blade generators.
It will be interesting to see whether these technologies are starting to enter the marketplace by the time the Brewster Wind Project north of Campbell River gets closer to construction. Will Capstone pursue cutting-edge technology and install the newest low-maintenance and wildlife-safe bladeless towers or Katrick hexagons — or stick to the tried & true spinning blade mechanism?
If the latter, we can hope that they have surveyed their proposed site carefully to ensure it is not part of a flyway for migratory birds — and perhaps that they will paint their spinning blades with bold black and white stripes to discourage collisions.
Any readers who are interested in this project and wish to submit questions or comments to Capstone can reach the company at
projects@capstoneinfra.com.
[watercolour illustrations generated by Midjourney, prompts by author; photos are credited in captions.]