Proceedings of CanWEA's 2006 conference and trade show

The Canadian wind energy industry is experiencing rapid and unprecedented growth. The year 2006 saw the installation of 534 MW of wind energy across Canada, representing approximately $1 billion in new investment. It is anticipated that the wind energy industry will help to create jobs and training opportunities for many Canadians, as well as provide ongoing economic benefits to local communities through municipal tax and land lease payments. However, many challenges remain if Canada is to meet, or exceed, its objective of a total of 10,000 MW in installed wind energy by 2015. This conference provided a forum for wind industry member, academics and representatives of both governmental and non-governmental agencies to discuss issues related to wind energy development. The conference was divided into 3 streams. The policy stream examined issues related to the Canadian Wind Power Production Incentive (WPPI) program, as well as various federal policies regarding environmental assessments and avian monitoring. Industry Canada initiatives to promote the Canadian wind industry were reviewed, and human resources challenges related to the anticipated labour shortage were discussed. Various provincial policy updates were presented, and issues concerning Crown lands and Aboriginal consultation processes were reviewed. New wind projects owned and operated by various Aboriginal groups were also presented. The business and development stream examined landowner-wind developer relations, as well as legal issues related to wind farm stakeholders. Issues related to the development and financing of wind power projects were also discussed, and partnership agreements in the wind energy industry were reviewed. The technical stream presented new techniques in wind power production forecast performance, and examined issues related to the verification of numerical weather predictions. New technologies for high resolution wind forecasting were presented along with wind resource maps generated by the Wind Atlas Analysis and Application Program (WAsP). A new tool to monitor regional climatological wind resource anomalies was also discussed along with issues concerning wind power in cold climates. The conference featured 47 presentations, of which 46 were catalogued separately for inclusion in this database