[ISL] A Prince Edward Island Innovation?
Aug. 14th, 2005 09:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldFreelance Island journalist Charles Mandel has an interesting article in Saturday's edition of The Globe and Mail, "Power Play," examining how the Atlantic Wind Test Site at North Cape, on the extreme northwest of Prince Edward Island, might place the Island on the cutting edge of alternative energy. (For background information and photos, Garry Sowerby's description of his visit last August to North Cape deserves reading.)
All of these technologies--wind power, electrolysis, fuel cells--exist already. The North Cape project would be unique in bringing these technologies together into an integrated whole. It would be, of necessity, a small-scale project, since the Atlantic Wind Test Site isn't a large-scale site. If the technology works, though, Prince Edward Island will have an package of technologies exportable worldwide to all those jurisidictions dependent on imported electricity and with the potential to develop wind power.
If this works, it will be wonderful. My only concern is that the components of the technological package might prove to be obsolete, that certain technologies picked as technological winners might be outstripped by other, better technologies. With the Minitel, the French managed to establish a ubiquitous nationwide interactive computer achieved nationwide penetration by the mid-1980s, after all, but the deregulation of telecommunications and the advent of the World Wide Web made the Minitel model no longer viable in the long run. Might fuel cells, say, prove to be a similar technological dead end? Despite the risk of being finding the Island saddled with the remnants of a future that never was, this may be our best chance yet to become something new.
Sea Cow Pond is an unlikely place for the future to take shape.
Located on Prince Edward Island's western tip about a two-hour drive from Charlottetown, the community consists of a scattering of modest homes and cottages amid the pastoral landscape of farmers' fields facing the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
Drive a little farther up the road toward North Cape, where the Island ends in red cliffs at the ocean's edge, and white, whirling sentinels appear on the horizon. This is the Atlantic Wind Test Site, home to an 80-metre-high Vesta V90, the largest windmill in North America, as well as 16 smaller ones.
These windmills form an essential part of the PEI government's next green initiative, a wind-hydrogen village that will be built over the next three years.
Hydrogen villages sound like science fiction, places where lighter-than-air buildings float above the ground while jet-powered cars zip along corridors in the sky. In fact, hydrogen is touted as the next big thing in alternative energy, a clean fuel source that will free people from their reliance on dwindling oil supplies.
With its wind-hydrogen village, PEI wants to be a leader in combining the two power-producing technologies.
[. . .]
The catalyst for the project is Ontario's Hydrogenics Corp. a publicly traded company that will use its technology to build hydrogen energy stations, a hydrogen-storage depot and a wind and hydrogen control system that will power the North Cape interpretative complex as well as homes and buildings in the area.
Other work includes a hydrogen refuelling station in Charlottetown to support up to three shuttle buses, as well as the development of fuel-cell utility vehicles and at least one hydrogen-powered farm.
PEI has good reasons to get involved in the project. Ninety per cent of the small island's power comes from elsewhere and the imported energy has led to high prices.
Over the years, that has led the province to look at innovative ways to develop power sources, including a district heating system for downtown Charlottetown that relies on energy from burning garbage in a waste plant instead of diverting it to landfill sites.
Currently, the wind provides about 5 per cent of the island's power. The problem is that the wind doesn't blow consistently. Hydrogenics has a solution using hydrogen.
At the same time that the wind is providing electricity to a building, it can also supply power to an electrolyzer. As the electricity passes through water in the electrolyzer, the water is split into its constituent components, hydrogen and oxygen.
The hydrogen is stored in pressurized tanks and after the wind has died down, it is reconstituted through a fuel cell to produce more electricity or even through an internal-combustion engine to provide power.
The fuel cell works like an electrolyzer in reverse, combining the stored hydrogen with oxygen and causing an electrochemical reaction to take place. The result is electricity, with water as a byproduct.
All of these technologies--wind power, electrolysis, fuel cells--exist already. The North Cape project would be unique in bringing these technologies together into an integrated whole. It would be, of necessity, a small-scale project, since the Atlantic Wind Test Site isn't a large-scale site. If the technology works, though, Prince Edward Island will have an package of technologies exportable worldwide to all those jurisidictions dependent on imported electricity and with the potential to develop wind power.
If this works, it will be wonderful. My only concern is that the components of the technological package might prove to be obsolete, that certain technologies picked as technological winners might be outstripped by other, better technologies. With the Minitel, the French managed to establish a ubiquitous nationwide interactive computer achieved nationwide penetration by the mid-1980s, after all, but the deregulation of telecommunications and the advent of the World Wide Web made the Minitel model no longer viable in the long run. Might fuel cells, say, prove to be a similar technological dead end? Despite the risk of being finding the Island saddled with the remnants of a future that never was, this may be our best chance yet to become something new.
