A FLIGHTY WIND -- Québec style

[TO Kid]

Here in Quebec we have the largest two windmill farms in Canada -- one in Matane and one in Cap-Chat, both of which are located in the east of the province, in the Gaspesie peninsula.

The operator of the two facilities, the Groupe Axor, recently submitted a detailed report to Quebec's Energy Board.
It includes a comprehensive set of data, including many graphs of the output of the plants and local wind speeds over the last several years. The results are quite shocking to windmill advocates -- they were reported on a cover story of the April 27 edition of Montreal's French-language newspaper, La Presse.

The Axor document, under the label "Mémoire Groupe Axor (23 avril 2004)," is posted at http://www.regie-energie.qc.ca/audiences/3526-04/MemoiresParticip3526/Memoire_GroupeAxor_23avr04.pdf

....its a 2.58 megabyte pdf file, encrypted to prevent copying (but you can still download it and view it).

As in the La Presse article, the Axor document states (translation), " The reality based over five years of operation is that during the best years, when all functioned without any bugs, the capacity factor (CF) was 18% and that it was 16,5 % on average for the last 12 months of production."

http://www.vanderbilt.edu/radsafe/0405/msg00051.html