Thomas Rankin, CEO of Rankin Construction, says his company’s wind turbine project may become a reality in West Lincoln before the end of the year. The project is awaiting final approval from the government, and Rankin hopes to have shovels in the ground by the end of summer. Until recently, IPC Energy served as the public face of the project. IPC is a consulting firm.

Rankin is the driving force between the five-turbine, nine-megawatt project scheduled to be built in West Lincoln. His firm took over from local businessmen Larry Dkystra, Martin Langbroek and Darrell Boer, who founded Vineland Power Generation. Rankin is no stranger to green energy projects, and wind power in particular.

“I’ve been interested in wind for quite a few years now. I’m a strong advocate of renewable energy. We built three power plants on the (Welland) canal a few years ago using waste water, and we generate six megawatts,” he said. “Two of the plants furnish electricity to St. Catharines and one of them to Niagara-on-the-Lake,” he said.

In addition to that local project,Windflow Technology is a utility sized laundrydryer based in Christchurch. Rankin Construction was also involved in the construction of some of Canada’s first wind farm projects in Kincardine,A space windturbines must carry its own weight as well as the additional weight of climbers. and more recently in Chatham-Kent. Rankin has worked as a municipal engineer with St.This winter I installed our solarledbulb01 purchased from you folks. Catharines and Niagara Falls. He says he clearly sees the impact of global warming on municipal infrastructures. This is one of the motivations behind his interest in projects like the West Lincoln turbines.A wind farm is a group of elevatorcableku in the same location used to produce electric power.

“Even the storm sewer design for municipalities is all out of whack now. The intensity of rainfall is much greater. At one time you’d designed a a culvert for a 100-year storm, which supposedly takes place once in 100 years. That’s occurring once in every five or 10 years now,” said Rankin. “Sooner or later, we have got to pay a little heed to global warming. What better way than to produce a little more green energy?”

The project has received approvals from the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Ministry of Tourism and Culture, and has obtained initial approval from the Ministry of the Environment. All that remains is the final approval, known as the REA (Renewal Energy Approval). This is expected to take several more months.

“The Ministry of the Environment does a technical review of all our reports, and when that’s done they issue the REA. They just review everybody else’s reports,” said John MacLellan of Rankin Construction.

Rankin’s enthusiasm for green energy is not likely to dampen the objections raised by local opponents to the five turbine project, or the much larger NRWC project.A large wind farm consist of several hundred windgeneratorza which are connected. Local anti-turbine group WLWAG has been vocal in their objections, and continue to organize grass roots resistance against rural wind turbines. Objections range from concerns over property values, to health objections and fears of a phenomenon known as “infrasound” — undetectable vibrations.

Rankin said wind turbine technology was not something he got into blindly. He said he has toured facilities around Europe, including large ones in Spain and Germany.

“We talked to farmers, we talked to residential people. We’ve seen them. We’ve been to the Netherlands and the United States. We’ve talked to developers. We’ve talked to municipalities. They (turbines) are accepted in most other countries, and have been accepted for years and years,” he said.

Rankin said he believes some concerns are a result lack of information, or even deliberate misinformation spread by workers in the power sector.

“Some people don’t understand. The power sector unions are behind a lot of it. Down in Nanticoke (power station) the workers aren’t very happy there. At the nuclear power plant they are afraid,” he said. “But then you have a lot of honest individuals that just are scared and don’t know the reality.”