New wind turbines going up on Whitehorse's Haeckel Hill

Four new wind turbines will soon be looking over Whitehorse fromHaeckel Hill, with the big blades expected to be spinning by fall, and feeding power into Yukon Energy's electricity grid.

"It's very significant in fact, to finally see something going up," saidLes Wilson, director of development for Chu Niikwan, the Kwanlin Dn First Nation's development corporation. Its company, Eagle Hill Energy Partnership, is managing the wind energy project.

"In the next twoweeks, you'll see all four towers being raised."

The four massive turbines are still making their way to Whitehorse in pieces, being truckedup the highway from Stewart, B.C., where they arrived by ship from Europe. They were designed in the Netherlands.

It takes about six trucks to carry all of the components for a single 46-metre-tall turbine, said Malek Tawashy, director of Eagle Hill Energy.

Haeckel Hill, west of the city's downtown, was once home to two working wind turbines owned by Yukon Energy.The first was installed in 1993, and the second, larger one went up in 2000. By 2018, both had reached the end of their lives and had been decommissioned.

The newturbines will be taller and with longer blades, said Tawashy. That means they can produce power at lower wind speeds than the old ones.

The new equipment is also better designed for a Northern climate, he said, with black, heated blades that will help reduce the amount of ice build-up a common issue for the old Haeckel Hill turbines.

"This projectreally presents a unique opportunity to provide more clean electricity onto the grid and reduce that increasing fossil fuel reliance," Tawashy said.

It's taken seven years to get to this point. The project started in 2016 and ground was broken at the site in 2021. Last summer's work involved rock blasting on the hilltop, building a concrete foundation for the turbines,and upgrading the steep, winding road up to the site.

The company has also been collecting a lot of data over that timeabout the resource on Haeckel Hill,said Tawashy. He said it's clear that it's a good site for wind energy.

"What we've been seeing over the last eightyears of data collection is that certainly the winds are strongest and most consistent in the winter, when Yukoners need that energy the most."

Each new wind turbine is equipped with a one-megawattgenerator, compared to the older turbines which had 600-kilowatt generators. The new project is expected to produce enough energy to power up to about 650 homes, over 20 years.

Tawashy said it's also a "milestone," asit's the first entirely Indigenous-owned wind power project in northern Canada.

"I think it's really something to be proud of," he said.

"I think it really exemplifies First Nations values, and sustainable land stewardship and developing renewable and sustainable energy sources."

The company Eagle Hill Energy takes its name from the Southern Tutchone name for Haeckel Hill,Thay T'aw, which means "Eagle Nest Mountain." The Kwanlin Dn believe a giant eagle nested on top of the mountain, the company's website states.

Tawashy says the turbines should be operational by October, to start feeding energy into Yukon's power grid this winter.