view . spring 2010
5
Dr. Rupp Carriveau with student Adam Mourad, in front of two of the 44 turbines they are studying.
Wind farms have been popping up
on
agricultural land across Ontario, spawning
a passionate debate. While some farmers
have jumped at the opportunity to maximize
revenue by allowing wind turbines on their
property, other neighbours have complained
vociferously, fuelling a debate between wind
energy backers and their opponents.
Dr. Rupp Carriveau, associate professor
of civil and environmental engineering,
understands why some complain about noise,
unsightliness and the potential environmental impacts wind turbines
might have on creatures of the air like birds and bats, but given
Canada’s voracious demand for electrical energy, he believes they’re
the most responsible way forward.
“Wind is currently the most rapidly growing component of the
renewable energy portfolio,” he says. “I’m all for wind power, but
I’m not blindly endorsing it either. The fact that people are raising
questions is healthy and intelligent. I think it’s prudent to move
ahead with caution, but we also have to be rational about what the
alternatives are. Are we going to bring more coal-fired generating
stations on line?”
At last count, wind energy supplied nearly one million Canadian
homes, representing less than five per cent of Canada’s energy
mix, but that number is constantly growing, especially due to the
country’s wide, open spaces and suitability for harnessing it. In
2003, there were 15 megawatts of electricity generated by wind in
Ontario; that number jumped to 1,100 megawatts in 2009.
“The potential for expansion is enormous,” said Carriveau, who
noted that every gigawatt of wind energy reduces carbon dioxide
emissions by about 1.2 million tonnes. “As we speak, farms are
being connected to the grid. Ontario is probably the best place in
the world to do wind right now.”
Since joining the University of Windsor in 2004, Carriveau has
been exerting as much of his own energy as possible on making
wind farms more efficient and establishing his school as a leading
research hub for optimizing wind energy generation.
When the University opens its state-of-
the-art, $112-million Centre for Engineering
Innovation in 2012, Carriveau will have a
brand new wind tunnel to work with. Some
of his recent work has focused on developing
new surface coatings for wind turbine
blades whose efficiency can be dramatically
reduced by ice, sand erosion and even the
accumulation of dead bugs.
His research team has an outstanding
collaborative relationship with the owners of
an Ontario wind farm that has an out-of-province remote operations
centre which electronically monitors all of its wind turbines and
transmits all their data directly to Carriveau’s lab.
“We’re getting globally unique data here,” he said. “They gave us
the keys to their data kingdom.”
That data, along with his own sensors that have been installed,
allows his team to develop new techniques to monitor the structural
health of the wind turbines. Turbine vibration over long periods of
time can sometimes lead to hairline fractures and monitoring allows
them to catch those before they become a problem. He envisions
a day when these machines will independently manage their own
optimization of performance and economic risk.
Wind energy has its challenges, says Carriveau. Wind doesn’t
always blow at peak demand periods, creating the problem
of storing the energy to make it “dispatchable.” Placing the
turbines on the best spot within a wind farm, or “micrositing”
can be challenging when the potential site for a turbine may be
aerodynamically ideal, but politically volatile.
But he also sees plenty of benefits, besides the obvious ones
of competitive generation costs and a cleaner, sustainable source.
Producing blades and other components and even decommissioning
wind turbines that currently have a 20-year life cycle can create new
jobs for skilled workers, he said.
“Canadian wind farms will have a global advantage, provided we
can move ahead with properly developing them now,” he said.
n
v
THE POTENTIAL
WIND ENERGY
of
BY STEPHEN FIELDS
“WIND IS CURRENTLY THE
MOST RAPIDLY GROWING
COMPONENT OF THE
RENEWABLE ENERGY
PORTFOLIO.”
DR. RUPP CARRIVEAU
