On a sunny September afternoon, a small crowd stood around the base of a towering white column in rural Nova Scotia and watched a spectacle taking place about 40 storeys above the ground.
The group of engineers and technicians had their eyes trained on their colleagues who were installing the final turbine blades at the Benjamins Mill wind farm in Hants County.
On the ground was Andrea Bradshaw, construction manager for the project, which is being built by Halifax-based renewables firm Natural Forces.
“It’s huge … a really big milestone for the project,” she said. “There’s a lot of work left to do after this in terms of mechanical and electrical completion, but, yeah, this is a big one.”
Nova Scotia is counting on more than 300 megawatts of new onshore wind energy to come online by the end of next year from a combination of Benjamins Mill and three other projects by two different developers.
The projects were picked by the provincial government in 2022, which guaranteed the developers agreements for selling the energy to Nova Scotia Power. The province’s aim was to get more renewable energy on the grid to help replace coal and reach 80 per cent renewable energy by 2030, a target that’s enshrined in legislation.
Natural Forces initially planned to have Benjamins Mill operating by 2024, but it’s taken longer than expected. It’s been a similar story for all the projects selected in that 2022 procurement. Benjamins Mills could be operational later this year and will likely be the first one completed.
Robert Apold, a director with Natural Forces, said the group of projects that were picked in 2022 were the “Guinea pigs” for a new approach to procuring renewable energy in Nova Scotia, and there have been some kinks to work out.
He said one major holdup in the timeline of Benjamins Mill was a study by Nova Scotia Power that took longer than anticipated.
Nova Scotia Power completes a system impact study before taking on any new energy generation facility to make sure the grid can handle the addition. A report from the utility earlier this year noted that new onshore wind projects in the past three years caused an influx of those studies.
“Once the Guinea pigs have gone through … I think we hit a rhythm, and once we hit the rhythm, it should be a lot easier from that point on,” Apold said.
Apold said global supply chain issues have also contributed to delays, especially coming out of the pandemic. Getting turbine pieces has become easier, but components that connect the turbines to the grid are still hard to come by, he said.
“Those things still take two to three years to procure…. It’s very important to get your orders in early,” said Apold.
In its second renewable energy procurement earlier this year, the PC government picked another six wind projects that were supposed to add 625 megawatts of energy to the grid by 2028.
However, according to Nova Scotia Power, only two of those signed power purchase agreements with the utility, bringing the expectation down to 262 megawatts.
Nova Scotia Power said it’s counting on a third round of onshore wind procurement for another 350 megawatts to get it to the finish line by the end of the decade.
It’s not clear if the province has the same outlook.
“We’re always looking at what we need to reach our 80 per cent renewables, and we believe we’re well on our way,” Nova Scotia Energy Minister Trevor Boudreau told reporters at an unrelated announcement over the weekend.
Boudreau said any additional procurement for renewable energy will happen as necessary. He said if it happens in the near future, the government will lead it. Eventually Nova Scotia’s new independent energy system operator will take responsibility for bringing new energy onto the grid.
