The recent agreement between Hydro-Québec and the Innus of the North Shore could open the door to new hydroelectric and wind projects, which would add to the opening up of virgin natural environments with its procession of attacks on their biodiversity, which is so important for the survival of indigenous culture.
However, it would be possible to leave these territories in peace, including also the valuable landscapes of inhabited Quebec and several agricultural environments currently targeted by wind energy developers, while increasing the production of electricity, in energy and power, if we concentrated it in the already largely artificialized environments that are the large Hydro-Québec reservoirs through hybrid production which would integrate wind and hydraulic energy in the same territory.
If our hydroelectricity production proves to be particularly interesting in the fight against climate change, but at the cost of significant damage to biodiversity, future hybrid electricity production could further protect biodiversity by sparing major new human footprints on waterways, natural and inhabited environments of Quebec.
When our first crown corporation built its large reservoirs, it created not one, but two sources of energy. If Quebec exploits the power of hydraulic power very well, our first state corporation has until now completely ignored the fact that the large areas of water in its reservoirs are exceptional wells of wind energy, comparable to those which several countries exploit at sea or in maritime environments due to the power and exceptional constancy of the winds which develop there.
In their book Wind power at the heart of the essential energy revolution (Multimondes 2009), two eminent specialists, Réal Reid and Bernard Saulnier, establish the wind energy that can currently be “stored” in Hydro-Québec’s current reservoirs at more than 900 TW, or nine times more than the 100 TW that Quebec claims to need in the next decade to satisfy the appetite for electric cars, the battery sector and other industrial projects.
Optimization of wind and hydraulic energy
In reality, Quebec could probably do without developing new waterways, small and large, for at least a generation, as well as opening up and developing new wind farms in virgin or inhabited natural environments if it implemented places a plan for the integration and optimization of wind and hydraulic energy, around and in its current hydroelectric reservoirs, concentrating both the impacts and the benefits of this production in already artificialized and sparsely inhabited environments.
Hydro-Québec has already experimented, with economic and energy success, with a related formula, namely the diversion of undeveloped rivers towards already developed basins. We are thinking here, for example, of the diversion of the Eastmain towards the La Grande turbines or the Carheil and Aux Pékans rivers, tributaries of the Moisie, towards the turbines of the Sainte-Marguerite complex. On the other hand, on an environmental level, the success was less resounding since it radically atrophied the diverted rivers and segmented, without significant mitigation, natural environments with the diversion canals. As for the storage of wind power in dams, it is already a technological and economic reality at Hydro-Québec for the benefit of private developers, who thus benefit from the regulated balancing of their production.
In all these large reservoirs, the wind is concentrated 70 or 75% generally on a particular bank, most of the time that located in the west-east axis of the prevailing winds. The mountain peaks thus placed under these prevailing winds are high quality wind sinks due to the compression of low and high altitude winds. The shore of these same sectors has almost equally important qualities, as well as the bank, in which other wind turbines can be installed up to a certain water depth.
In addition, many Quebec hydro reservoirs are filled with islands, which are in reality the tops of submerged mountains. These islands also have significant wind potential, just like the submerged summits of other mountains, which often skim the surface and which, once emerged, could also accommodate wind turbines, built dry and at a lower cost than construction. at sea, when the state company will have to lower the level of its reservoirs in order to modernize the turbines of its oldest power plants in turn.
The upcoming arrival of wind turbines of 8 MW, or even 10 MW and more, announced by the major international turbine manufacturers, would have much less visual and sound impact on these islands or around large reservoirs than if we undertook to install them. in peri-urban or agricultural environments. But the productivity of these mega-wind turbines would be very interesting, in terms of energy and power, in and around Quebec’s hydro reservoirs, especially since the transport of these enormous pieces of equipment on water would be made even easier. It would still be necessary to carry out studies on the potential impact of infrasound from these megamachines on aquatic species and on the management of water levels in rivers which would inherit higher volumes of water due to possible overproduction of electricity.
Hybrid management
But one fact remains, all the technologies exist to transport the necessary equipment and construction materials on the reservoirs, just as existing power plants could process this energy with the equipment in place before transporting it to users. Certainly, large wind inputs would modify the management of the reservoirs, initially calibrated according to local rainfall.
It would then be necessary either to increase the utilization factor of the power plants due to the additional contributions from wind power, or, if these contributions became too important, to think about increasing the number of turbines in existing power plants during their modernization, which Hydro -Quebec has already done so after diverting watercourses from neighboring watersheds.
Multiplying the number of turbines on already artificialized waterways would certainly have fewer negative consequences for biodiversity and more positive consequences for Hydro-Québec’s profits than building new dams and turbines on virgin waterways. . Just as it would become possible to transport this additional energy in existing electricity corridors with less impact, even if it means widening them, rather than creating new ones. And overall, by optimizing the hybrid use of its reservoirs, Hydro-Québec, the government and the population would receive the income from this production of our collective resources instead of letting it slip into the pockets of rich private developers.
We owe Hydro-Québec the invention of 750 kV lines to optimize the transmission of large powers over long distances. Hydro-Québec engineers are, by far, capable of developing an innovative hybrid management system for our large reservoirs, a formula that could make a splash on an international scale at a time when global warming has begun. to confront hydroelectricity producers with unprecedented drops in levels. Including Hydro-Québec…