6 out of 10 turbines out of service at PEI wind farm, government says

One of PEI’s largest provincial wind farms is operating at less than 40 percent of design capacity.

The Hermanville wind farm, near the eastern tip of the island, came online in 2014 with 10 turbines at a cost of $60 million.

On Tuesday, the PEI Energy Corporation said only four of those turbines remain functional — for no reason.

“It’s something that needs to be rectified quickly because it interferes with our goals,” said Steven Myers, PEI’s secretary of environment, energy and climate action.

“When you have an asset that looks and works like this, it’s very difficult to convince people that this is something positive for their community or something positive for Prince Edward Island,” he said.

PEI is committed to achieving net zero emissions from energy use by 2030, and net zero emissions from all sources by 2040, ten years ahead of the rest of Canada.

The PEI Energy Corporation said energy production from the Hermanville wind farm for 2022-2023 was about 40,000 megawatt hours — just 35 percent of the 110,000 megawatt hours the park produced in each of its first two years of operation.

The company said the non-operating turbines were offline for between 114 and 476 days.

“I think it’s the bearings that are broken and we’ve had problems with the supplier meeting our needs,” said Myers. “They don’t seem to have much interest in getting behind their product.”

Nearly $5 million in damages sought

In 2014, the PEI government said the 10 Acciona AQ 116/3000-class turbines at Hermanville were the first of their kind to be commissioned in North America.

According to the PEI Energy Corporation, Acciona signed a 15-year service and warranty agreement with the province, guaranteeing that the turbines would be operational through 2029 and capable of generating power 97 percent of the time.

According to the company, Acciona was acquired in 2016 by Nordex USA, Inc., part of a network of companies headquartered in Germany.

We can’t let $60 million projects go adrift. Taxpayers just shouldn’t stand for that.—Fred Cheverie

In an emailed statement to CBC, Nordex said the company is “in ongoing discussions with the project owner [P.E.I. Energy Corp.] to rectify the situation as soon as possible and cannot comment further at this time.”

In a statement Tuesday, the company told CBC News it has sought damages under its contract with Nordex totaling about $4.8 million.

Of that, $1.43 million remains outstanding for fiscal year 2022-23, but the company said it “does not expect collection issues” with those funds.

The statement gave no further insight into the maintenance issues with the turbines, but said the company is “developing a plan to address current operational issues with the Hermanville wind farm.”

Myers estimated the value of electricity PEI loses due to the failed turbines to be between $2 and $3 million per year.

He said repairing the turbines “might require a financial contribution from our side, and we may need to look at other means to recoup the company’s costs.”

Myers went on to say that the county is preparing to take the company to court, but the county has not provided any further information about the possibility of legal action.

As of Monday, no lawsuit had been filed with the PEI court system.

‘Business risk’

In a March filing with the Island Regulatory and Appeals Commission, Maritime Electric referred to the decline in production in Hermanville as a “business risk” for the private company.

In a statement Tuesday, the company’s president and CEO Jason Roberts said Maritime Electric has included wind power production at Hermanville in its own plan to reduce electricity consumption emissions by 2030.

Without most of Hermanville’s production, the company said it needed to source more energy through NB Power.

Fred Cheverie lives a short drive from the wind farm and has watched for the past 18 months as more and more turbines there have stopped working.

“Everyone in the area has seen the same thing as us. They haven’t functioned well at all.”

Cheverie said he would like the government to reassess its wind energy strategy.

“We can’t let $60 million projects go adrift. Taxpayers just shouldn’t stand for that,” he said.