MINTO, Man. – On a day when the winds were expected to gust up to 70 kilometres an hour, several community leaders gathered here to talk about opportunities in renewable energy.
For Rick Verspeek, the winds were a good omen.
He was here Jan. 8 to outline the latest efforts to attract an ethanol plant to the area. In his presentation, he revealed that the generation of electricity from wind power could become an offshoot of those efforts.
With the winds blowing outside the community hall where the meeting was held, the potential was hard to ignore. “It’s just a question of making it financially viable.”
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Verspeek was representing Turtle Mountain Sustainable Ventures Inc., an organization formed last year by six towns and rural municipalities to attract new enterprises.
The organization hopes the Iogen Corp. will choose the area for a factory to convert straw into ethanol. A decision by Iogen could be made by the end of this year, Verspeek said.
If a plant is built in the region, a byproduct would be lignin, which could potentially be converted into electricity. There’s a possibility, said Verspeek, that the conversion of lignin could provide enough electricity to power the ethanol plant, plus surplus electricity to sell for added revenue.
However, the surplus might be too little to warrant the costs of setting up the infrastructure needed to feed that electricity into Manitoba Hydro’s provincial grid.
That’s where the idea of wind power comes into play. A wind farm could generate the additional electricity needed to make selling to Manitoba Hydro viable.
Alberta and Saskatchewan have several ventures established that convert wind into electricity. One such venture is at Gull Lake, Sask., where tall towers hold giant propellers. Behind those propellers are turbines that create electricity.
Three feasibility studies on the Turtle Mountain project will be completed by spring, Verspeek said.
