Renewable North: Policy considerations for wind-diesel systems in remote Canada

Canada has over 200,000 citizens living in remote communities, many of whom rely on diesel generators for their electricity supply. Developing wind power may be one of the only options that many of them have for year-round locally sourced renewable energy. Canada has long explored the possibility of wind-diesel hybrid systems but actual projects are not happening at a significant pace to address even a fraction of these communities. This research takes a multidisciplinary approach to examining how the development of such systems could be facilitated by looking at social and economic barriers, to technical advances that could enable broader deployment and finished with an examination of how public policy could incent uptake.;A stakeholder survey is discussed in Chapter 2 as to their perceptions of the key barriers to wind-diesel systems in Canada. This analysis illustrates there is strong agreement that system costs both capital and operational continue to be perceived as the most significant, but not the only important barrier to wind-diesel systems in Canada. There is a notable disagreement between two groupings of stakeholders as to the technical maturity of wind-diesel systems, specifically utilities and governments who remain largely unconvinced the technology is ready in the Canadian context compared to manufacturers, developers and researchers who strongly believe it is.;Micropower simulators were developed to model energy storage systems could help to overcome financial barriers by improving the economics of wind-diesel systems. This approach models where the round-trip efficiency and the overall capital costs of any energy storage needs to be in order to make these systems useful in improving the performance of wind-diesel systems in Canada.;Finally the potential for a federal incentive to support broad deployment of wind-diesel systems in Canada is discussed. The design of this incentive was a result of barriers analysed in this research as well as models developed herein which examine its uptake. This incentive structure is based on the success of past Federal production incentives in Canada for large-scale wind power, and is tailored for the needs in remote communities. Chapter 4 discusses the uptake potential for such a policy and how it can result in a savings of 11.5 ;The research begins with an examination of the history of wind-diesel projects in Canada, as well as selected projects from Alaska before discussing barriers to renewable energy projects in general, and policy options that have been used to overcome these barriers. A more detailed look at policies that are aimed at remote communities in Alaska as well as Australia illustrate how successful jurisdictions have been able to target remote communities for renewable power deployment.