6 of 10 turbines out of commission at P.E.I. wind farm, government says

One of P.E.I.'s biggest provincially owned wind farms is operating at less than 40 per cent of its design capacity. 

The wind farm at Hermanville, near the eastern tip of the Island, came online with 10 turbines at a cost of $60 million in 2014.

On Tuesday, the P.E.I. Energy Corporation said only four of those turbines remain functional — with no reason given as to why. 

"It's something that needs to be rectified quickly, because it's standing in the way of our goals," said Steven Myers, P.E.I.'s minister of environment, energy and climate action.

"When you have an asset that looks like that, that works like that, it's really hard to convince people that this is a positive thing for their community or a positive thing for Prince Edward Island," he said. 

P.E.I. has pledged to reach net-zero emissions from energy use by 2030, and net-zero emissions from all sources by 2040, a decade earlier than the rest of Canada.

The P.E.I. Energy Corporation said energy production at the Hermanville wind farm for 2022-23 was about 40,000 megawatt hours — just 35 per cent of the 110,000 megawatt hours the farm produced in each of its first two years of operation.

The corporation said the non-working turbines had been offline for between 114 and 476 days.

"I think it's bearings that are broken, and we've had trouble with the supplier to meet our needs," said Myers. "They don't seem to have a whole lot of interest in standing behind their product."

In 2014, the P.E.I. government said the 10 Acciona AQ 116/3000 class turbines in Hermanville were the first of their kind commissioned in North America.

According to the P.E.I. Energy Corporation, Acciona signed a 15-year service and warranty agreement with the province, guaranteeing the turbines would be operational and able to generate power 97 per cent of the time through to 2029.

In 2016, according to the corporation, Acciona was acquired by Nordex USA, Inc., part of a network of companies headquartered out of Germany.

In an emailed statement to CBC, Nordex said the company is "in constant dialogue with the project owner [P.E.I. Energy Corp.] to remedy the situation as soon as possible and cannot comment further at this time."

In a statement Tuesday, the corporation told CBC News it has claimed damage payments under its contract with Nordex totalling approximately $4.8 million.