A crane works on a wind turbine at the Whitla Wind Project in November - Photo courtesy Capital Power

By Charles Lefebvre

Capital Power provides additional details on Whitla Wind Facility second phase

Dec 6, 2019 | 5:15 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB — Capital Power has provided additional information about their plans to expand the Whitla Wind Facility in the next two years.

The company announced Thursday they will be going ahead with the second phase of the facility that was previously approved when the project was announced two years ago.

“We started with the first phase, because that is was the contract we had under the REP (Renewable Electricity Program),” said Jerry Bellikka, director of government relations with Capital Power. “But when the provincial government, this summer, declared we were going to stay with the energy-only market, that gave us the confidence to build the second phase of Whitla.”

The first phase began commercial operations on December 1 and is capable of generating 201.6 megawatts of electricity.

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“We’ve been working for this day for a long time, and we’re really happy to have the project declared complete,” said Bellikka. “Everything seems to be working well.”

The second phase will be built adjacent to the first facility, and will be capable of generating 97.2 megawatts of electricity. Construction is expected to begin in 2021, with the goal of commissioning it by the end of the year.

Bellikka says despite the smaller size of the facility, they’re expecting the same number of workers when construction begins.

“You still have to have the same number of cranes and the same number of people working on each turbine,” he said. “You still have to have cement trucks moving cement. You don’t have to pour as many foundations, but you still need to do that all in the same sort of area. We can expect, we had about 300 on site for this project. we could be fairly close to that in 2021.”