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Canadian Wind Farms
What’s a wind farm exactly?
It’s no secret that using the wind to create electricity
has been around for a long time; remember windmills? When
the wind turns the blades of a windmill, it spins a turbine
inside a small generator to produce electricity. A typical
modern wind turbine will produce enough electricity to meet
the annual needs of about 500 homes.
“Wind farms” bring together groups of wind turbines
to produce enough electricity to power thousands of homes.
The world's largest wind farm, located in Texas, consists
of 421 turbines producing 735 Megawatts of electricity. The
turbines cover nearly 47,000 acres (190 km²) of land.
There is a big difference between a wind farm (known as “large
wind”) and “small wind”. “Small wind”
usually involves either a small turbine powering a house or
a medium-sized turbine powering a farm, business or a small
community. Large wind provides electricity to the electric
grid (rather than just a home or business).
Right now, wind farms in Canada have a capacity of 3,359 MW – enough to power almost 1,000,000 homes or equivalent to about
1.1 % of Canada’s total electricity demand. Canada’s
wind resource is well distributed in rural areas throughout
the country with various wind farms in operation, and more now
under construction.
Canada’s massive hydroelectric resource, which provides
60% of Canada’s electricity, is an excellent complement
for wind energy and provides an excellent opportunity to integrate
more wind energy into the system than is the case in many
other countries.
Build Your Own Small Wind Project
Want to power your home, small business or community with
wind energy? Visit www.smallwindenergy.ca
Use Your Land’s Wind
Do you have a good wind resource on your property? Want to
benefit from installing a wind farm on your land? Find the
answers to all this and more in our Land
Use Fact Sheet, or Planning
a Wind Farm.
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