Silently harnessing the wind
By Anthony Reinhart
Globe and Mail
12/18/03
On Lake Shore Boulevard, where a stiff wind hacks away at the surface of Lake Ontario, the drone of traffic masks a softer sound.
You can barely hear the quiet revolution of the turbine's blades some 30 storeys up, where they catch that wind, convert it to power and send it into the city as fuel for heat and light.
While its power contribution is modest compared to the louder, dirtier engines of the city's economy -- the coal burners and nuclear plants -- the symbolism of Toronto's turbine is hard to miss: a clean and quiet model of simplicity, surrounded by an ever-complex, smog-laden, energy-gulping city.
Today at 11 a.m., a handful of people will gather near the turbine to celebrate its first birthday after a year of near-silent service, a year that incidentally saw the biggest blackout in the city's history.
Among the crowd will be two of the turbine's biggest boosters, whose histories suggest a willingness to let the winds carry them in interesting and unconventional directions: Joyce McLean, an environmental activist turned Toronto Hydro executive, and Ed Hale, a former businessman and self-described tech nerd who once chucked it all to sail the Caribbean.
(Read on at: http://www.greatlakesdirectory.org/on/121803_great_lakes.htm)
A personal quest to promote the use of wind energy and hydrogen technology in the Great Lakes area of the United States. The Great Lakes area is in a unique position to become an energy exporting region through these and other renewable energy technologies. *Update 2014: Just do it everywhere - Dan*
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