While the Ministry of Forests has approved the environmental assessments for up to 21 wind turbines on Mount Mable and Mount Bob, the founder of MKI Wind Energy says he isn’t sure when shovels will hit the ground.
Martin Ince says they are looking for buyers to purchase the power from the Mount Mable Wind Projects, located on Highway 5 North of Merritt.
He says the preferred option is to have BC Hydro as a buyer, however, timelines are dependent on the issuing of a “clean power call” from BC Hydro which is expected at the earliest in 2025 with construction in 2027.
“They (BC Hydro) has recently been working on a forecast for what sort of power they need in the future and they might be missing the boat and missing the intense electrification, that really needs to happen in the province,” said Ince.
“I anticipate that they are going to change their mind in a few years, and say ‘yeah we did not really consider the dire need of climate change and the need to electrify everything including transportation of course.”
However, due to BC Hydro not wanting to purchase wind power currently, Ince says they are looking at alternative options.
“There are mines in the area, including Highland Valley Copper, who could also purchase that power and reduce their greenhouse gas emissions considerably. Instead of using diesel haul trucks, they could change their fleet at least partially over to electric, battery-powered haul trucks.”
Ince suggests if they find an alternative buyer such as Highland Valley Copper, they would need to build their own transmission lines.
“Current regulations in BC do not allow power produced by independent power producers to be sold to anyone else and use BC Hydro powerlines, so the alternative is to build your own powerlines, to send users to a consumer who wants the power.”
Ince says 10 of the turbines projected for this project can produce power for over 5,000 homes.
“You might have seen some of the turbines on the Coquihalla Connector going over to Kelowna, there’s five over there. These turbines would be they would look very similar to that they would be actually though, considerably larger, probably producing each turbine could produce twice the amount of power that one of those could produce.”