Six weeks after the deadline for bids for Ontario wind power contracts, Eastern Ontario and the Ottawa area waits for approval of the projects by the Independent Electricity Systems Operator or IESO. Word on the project approvals is expected in November or December.

While Ontario is only contracting for 300 megawatts of wind power (which we don’t need) in 2015, the bids totaled thousands of megawatts for projects all across the province.

Closest to Ottawa is the EDP Renewables bid for an expansion of their project at South Branch (Brinston) and east of Ottawa, EDF, RES Canada and Leader Resources have project bids for the St Isidore, Nation Twp, and Stormont-Dundas-Glengarry areas. None of the projects is supported by the communities and municipal governments.

The project started in 2008 in the North Gower-Richmond area is now defunct, with options expired; the company launching a bid for a contract, Prowind, based in Germany, failed to qualify as a bidder for the 2015 bid process.