CaDCR staff writer
Capstone Infrastructure Corporation has awarded engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contracts for two wind farms in Alberta to Bird Construction Inc.
The Wild Rose 2 Wind Farm will be constructed in Cypress County, Alta., about 20 kilometres southeast of Medicine Hat. It will have a rated capacity of 192 MW of renewable energy. The Buffalo Atlee Wind Farm will be built about 100 km northwest of Medicine Hat, Alta.
“We are excited to work with Capstone to deliver these important renewable energy projects,” said Teri McKibbon, president and CEO of Bird. “We look forward to leveraging Bird’s extensive self-perform capabilities to build our growing portfolio of future energy projects as we continue to expand and diversify our work programs across Canada.”
Capstone acquired the Wild Rose project from NaturEner Canada Inc. in November 2021 and expects to break ground for construction in 2022.
The Buffalo Atlee Wind Farm is comprised of four project phases and is located approximately 5 km east of the hamlet of Jenner in the rural municipality of Special Areas No.2 in Alberta.
Capstone is planning to develop, build and operate the Buffalo Atlee Wind Farm, and is partnered with the Sawridge First Nation on phases 1, 2 and 3. Each of the project phases 1,2 and 3 won a contract with the Alberta Government under the Renewable Electricity Program (REP) Round 2 procurement administered by the Alberta Electricity System Operator (AESO) in 2018.
In the summer of 2020, work was initiated by Capstone on a fourth phase of the wind farm comprising two additional turbines. This project phase will be developed separately by will be built and operated at the same time as the first 3 phases. Find out more about the Buffalo Atlee 4 Project here .
The Wind Farm is expected to go into construction in the fall of 2021 and should be operational by December 2022. Once operational, the Buffalo Atlee Wind Farm will have a combined capacity of 58.3 MW and will be comprised of 13 total turbines.
The wind farm project is anticipated to produce nearly 350,000 megawatt-hours per year which is enough to supply electricity for about 25,000 average Albertan homes annually.
