Whitla Wind Facility project remains on schedule

MEDICINE HAT, AB — Capital Power says a wind energy project being built near Bow Island remains on schedule for operation by the end of the year.

The Whitla Wind Facility, which is being built on 33,000 acres of land in the County of 40 Mile, has been under construction since September 2018.

“We’re very happy with the amount of work we’ve had done so far,” said Jerry Bellikka, director of government relations with Capital Power, over the phone from Ottawa. “We spent most of the winter building an operations and maintenance building. That’s going to be a 6,600 square-foot facility right in the middle of the project, and next to that is going to be an electrical substation that AltaLink is in the process of building.”

Bellikka says the recent cold snap actually helped keep construction going, rather than slowing it down.

“The cold weather means the roads stay frozen, and we were able to move a lot of loads of gravel onto our site that we will be using to make concrete when things melt and we start doing foundations later on in the summer,” he said.

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Once the melt is fully completed, concrete will be poured, and Bellikka says construction will start picking up in the summer, as crews install 56 wind turbines.

“Right now, I think we have about 70 or so people on site working,” he said. “When we get to the height of work, it will be about 300 people that will be involved around the project.”

Once operational, the first phase of the project will generate 201.6 megawatts of electricity. It is expected to go online in late 2019.