{"id":8198,"date":"2025-01-23T16:58:17","date_gmt":"2025-01-23T20:58:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/?p=8198"},"modified":"2025-01-23T19:26:10","modified_gmt":"2025-01-23T23:26:10","slug":"mersey-river-wind-to-power-region-of-queens-properties","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/2025\/01\/23\/mersey-river-wind-to-power-region-of-queens-properties\/","title":{"rendered":"Mersey River Wind to power Region of Queens properties"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Region of Queens has reached a deal with Renewall Energy to supply electricity from the Mersey River Wind farm. (Renewall Energy Inc.)<\/p><\/div>\n

The Region of Queens will be using wind energy produced in their own backyard to keep the lights on in municipal properties.<\/span><\/p>\n

The municipality will be one of the first customers of the Mersey River Wind Project, set to begin operating in 2026.<\/span><\/p>\n

Halifax-based Roswall Development Inc. are the owners of <\/span>Mersey River Wind<\/span><\/a>. It plans to build 33 wind turbines on about 80 hectares of Crown land west of the Mersey River in Milton.<\/span><\/p>\n

Roswall will sell power directly to customers, bypassing Nova Scotia Power, under the name Renewall Energy. Roswall is the first in the province to be awarded a licence to sell power directly to consumers under the Renewable to Retail program introduced in 2015.<\/span><\/p>\n

It will deliver electricity using Nova Scotia Power\u2019s grid, but customers will be billed directly by Renewall. <\/span>They want to sign up commercial users first and then open it up to residential customers.<\/span><\/p>\n

Region of Queens councillors voted last March to allow the project to go ahead.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sometime after that, the region signed a deal with the company to get its electricity from the wind farm. It will be among 30 government, commercial and industrial customers who have signed up so far.<\/span><\/p>\n

It appears councillors approved the deal in a closed-door session at some point before the end of 2024, under the old municipal council. The agreement was never discussed in an open council meeting.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And even the region\u2019s recently elected Mayor Scott Christian couldn\u2019t give QCCR the details.<\/span><\/p>\n

But he said he\u2019s happy about the agreement with Roswall.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI know that it was council directed the municipality to enter an agreement with Roswall with respect to being a customer,” Christian said Thursday in an interview, “but I don’t know the number of megawatts or the duration of the deal or when that actually would have been advanced by the administration. I don’t know those details right now.<\/span><\/p>\n

“I think we should be proud and I don’t see any reason why any of that can’t come to light.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Queens isn\u2019t the only municipality to sign up. The Halifax region, the Town of Bridgewater and the Municipality of Shelburne have also signed deals with Renewall.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to a staff report last October<\/a> for the Municipality of Shelburne, the deal with Renewall could see that municipality saving up to $500,000 over 20 years in electricity costs.<\/span><\/p>\n

Renewall\u2019s presentation to Shelburne\u2019s municipal council said they offer rates two to five per cent lower than Nova Scotia Power\u2019s rates in the first year of an agreement, with a fixed increase of one per cent each year over a 20-year contract.<\/span><\/p>\n

Roswall CEO Dan Roscoe told QCCR that the wind farm could be supplying electricity to customers by the end of 2026. The company is scheduled to begin construction of the basic infrastructure this spring, with turbines set to arrive in the spring of 2026.<\/span><\/p>\n

“The key feature of our rates is that they’re fixed over time,” Roscoe said. “The energy portion would be essentially predictable over the term of the contract, so that creates a certainty from a power price perspective that isn’t available with the public utility.”<\/p>\n

Roscoe said that in addition to the municipalities signed up so far, they\u2019ve also signed up some private-sector customers too, some of which are on the South Shore.<\/span><\/p>\n

He said that many of their early customers want a greener option, either because their customers or governments are demanding it. Another reason is purely practical.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cLarge energy users, and I think this applies to the public sector entities as well, that have perhaps fixed budgets, having predictability is actually very valuable, especially if electricity is a big percentage of your expenses.<\/span><\/p>\n

“So the larger energy users, if they can get a hedge on their power price, that’s very advantageous for them.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

An added bonus for the Region of Queens is the expected annual tax revenue boost of up to $800,000 from the wind farm. Christian said switching to renewable energy is a no-brainer.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIn terms of realizing savings for the ratepayer, savings for the municipality as it relates to our energy consumption, we’re big energy consumers, <\/span>we spend a lot of money on electricity, and so where we can realize savings while also achieving meaningful progress toward greening our facilities and reducing carbon emissions associated with energy for our facilities, it feels win-win-win to me.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Email: rickconradqccr@gmail.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Listen to the audio version of this story below<\/p>\nhttps:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/newqueenswindenergydealjan2325.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Region of Queens will be using wind energy produced in their own backyard to keep the lights on in municipal properties. The municipality will be one of the first customers of the Mersey River Wind Project, set to begin operating in 2026. Halifax-based Roswall Development Inc. are the owners of Mersey River Wind. It […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,5],"tags":[379,2828,1881,1747,2827,2825,1746,2821,2826,2822,24,744,1878,741,226,2824,743,2823,1748],"class_list":["post-8198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community-news","category-news-posts","tag-bridgewater","tag-dan-roscoe","tag-electricity","tag-energy","tag-energy-savings","tag-halifax-regional-municipality","tag-mersey-river-wind","tag-municipal-property","tag-municipality-of-shelburne","tag-power","tag-region-of-queens","tag-renewable-energy","tag-renewall-energy","tag-roswall-development-inc","tag-scott-christian","tag-wind-energy","tag-wind-farm","tag-wind-power","tag-wind-turbines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8198"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8198\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8209,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8198\/revisions\/8209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}