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- The Wind Power Production Incentive, or WPPI, was a program of the Canadian Government that promoted the generation of electricity from wind power in Canada to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas that would otherwise enter the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels. During the five-year field trial projects were performed to test the performance based on various weather conditions. Provision of economic incentives were guaranteed for up to 1,000 MW of new installed capacity by 2007. New installations in 2003 included the MacBride Wind Farm (75.9 MW) in Alberta, the North Cape Wind Farm Expansion (5.3 MW), and the Aeolous Wind Turbine (3 MW) in PEI, the Parc éolien du Renard (2.25 MW) in Quebec, the Cypress Hill Wind Farm Expansion (4.6 MW) in Saskatchewan, and the Ontario Place Wind turbine (0.75 MW) in Ontario. The government paid about half the excess cost of producing electricity from wind, compared to conventional sources, for the first 10 years of a project. The Canadian WPPI Program started in 2002 and ended on March 31, 2007 after a change of government. A different program partly replaced it. A wind farm costs about the same to build per watt of nameplate capacity as a coal-fired power station of similar rating, but the economies of scale are fewer for a wind farm due to the lower quantity of power produced over the life of a station. Depending on location, wind farms may produce nearly full power output only about 28% of the time, whereas a base-loaded coal-fired station runs at full output more than 85% of the time. The WPPI provided a direct subsidy per kilowatthour of wind energy produced, from 1.2 cents down to 0.8 cents depending on the startup date of a project. Measures were taken to distribute the incentive across the country. The total estimated cost of the program was (CDN) $260 million. The program lived a short 5 year life. (en)
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