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Project Details - Environmental evaluation of 25 MW wind power project

fga Consulting Engineers Limited participated as a partner in the proposal awarded by Newfoundland Hydro to NeWind for the installation of the first commercial scale wind power generation facility in Newfoundland. One of fga ‘s responsibilities was the assembly and evaluation of the various layers of information that would impact the selection of the most appropriate locations for the facility.

The development of preferred locations for the facility included factors that maximized power generation and minimized the potential impact on the existing environment and physical infrastructure. This required the assimilation of a large amount of information concerning the various facets of the project and provincial environment and infrastructure.

The information required was grouped in categories of Wind Speed profiles, Icing potential, Electrical Grid layout, Services infrastructure, Environmentally sensitive areas, and Land use areas, each with sub categories. The available data was located and obtained from a wide variety of sources in varying formats and scales that were incompatible with standard electronic processing techniques. A significant challenge was assembling this information (such as DXF drawings XLS tables, DXF maps, Generated digital drawings from images, Lat/Long coordinated of points, Raster (pixel) images) into a cohesive database that could be queried to produce spatially related results. This was accomplished using a Geographic Information System (GIS) based on the windows operating system.

Using our GIS system the data was geo-referenced to a base map of Newfoundland at 1:500,000 scale. A rating system was applied to the geo-referenced data through the GIS database. This rating system was then used to select those areas that met the selection criteria. The rating system was easily changed to allow querying through “what if” scenarios and to study and gain insight into the interrelationships of the accumulated data and thereby select the optimum sites.

The result of the study were graphically presented and used to prioritize the sites that would be best suited for wind power generation on the island of Newfoundland.