Exploring the potential of wind energy is no longer a new idea in the Yukon. With two windmills atop Haeckel Hill and several monitoring programs and studies underway, Yukon's energy planners have demonstrated a strong interest in wind power.

"We've been spending a lot of time and resources here in the Yukon to explore wind energy," says J.P. Pinard, "but sometimes it felt like we were flying by the seat of our pants."

"I didn't have enough knowledge, experience and academic background, and nobody else in the territory did. We were hiring outside experts, but their analyses weren't as insightful or relevant as I thought they could be. I felt we needed the expertise here."

So the local engineer committed himself to returning to school, a move that will give the Yukon its very own wind energy expert. For the past several years, Pinard has been splitting his time between Whitehorse and the University of Alberta in Edmonton as he completes his studies. He attained his Masters degree and now he's continuing with a PhD at U of A's Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.

"I first got interested in wind energy in 1996," says Pinard, "so much so that I decided to change careers."

He approached Doug Craig of Boreal Alternative Energy Centre, and they raised the funds to install a wind monitoring station at Bear Creek near Haines Junction. Soon Pinard started working with John Maissan at Yukon Energy, and he's been running their wind research program for several years.

If there's a spike in energy demand in the Yukon, or a mine comes back online, Pinard says that wind power may be a cost-effective way to meet the demand. Because it's windier in the winter, wind energy would complement hydro and displace diesel.

Pinard has focused on the Yukon throughout his studies. As a result he's produced relevant reports and data and tackled technical questions that are helping improve local capacity to pursue wind energy in the future.

Because most of the world's wind energy projects are located in relatively flat terrain, much of the existing research and data isn't suitable for guiding developments in the Yukon.

"Early on, I wrote several reports to do with assessing wind in mountainous terrain. We learned a lot about the Yukon," says Pinard. "For example, studying inversion layers helped us understand the relationship between Haeckel Hill and the airport, figuring out exactly why there'd been no correlation."

He also analyzed years of weather balloon data for Whitehorse and several other northern cities. "That research determined that this inversion phenomenon is prevalent across the north, and why."

Mountains have a major effect on the flow of winds, so Pinard studied the upper air data and Yukon's topography to understand it better.

"The orientation of ridges is key," he explains, "When a ridge is perpendicular to the air flow, the air moves faster as it's forced over the ridge. Mountain ridges parallel to air flow aren't as attractive for wind power."

More recently, Pinard has been pre-occupied with computer modeling tools. He has found a dozen different software packages designed for either large continental scale weather prediction or for modelling small hills. But little was available for the mountain scale modeling like Pinard wanted to do.

Before installing a wind turbine, you need to assess the wind potential of the site. But setting up wind monitoring stations is costly, especially in the Yukon where access can be so difficult. By developing computer wind modeling tools for the Yukon and using available topographical and weather data, Pinard could identify places that may have a good wind regime for energy generation.

"My thought was that there must be a way to scale one of these weather prediction models down to a workable size, like from 1000 kilometres square down to 50 km," he explains.

"A few other groups are doing this around the world, including researchers in Finland. I plan to use the same methods and test these models at a local scale, using monitoring stations on Mount Sumanik."

Pinard has set up five wind monitoring stations on Mount Sumanik that measure wind speed and direction. Meanwhile, he's also obtaining temperature and wind speed profiles from weather balloons and using available elevation models of Mount Sumanik to plug into his model.

Once his model generates data that correlates to the actual data collected by the monitoring stations, Pinard will know his modeling is accurate.

"I'm getting there," he says, noting that a series of equipment problems had to be dealt with before he could even begin testing the models. "It takes a lot of work and adjustments. But once I validate the model, we can say with some confidence that computer models can help in the placement of wind farms in the mountains of the Yukon."