The 100-megawatt Nation Rise Wind Farm project nears completion as several of the last towers rise up, waiting for their fan-blade attachments, followed by connection to the Ontario Power Grid. The Nation Rise Wind Farm is owned by EDP Renewables, a Portuguese company which specializes in alternative energy projects. Company officials expect to have it online and producing energy to sell to Ontario by the end of this year.

“We plan to have commercial operation by the end of 2019,” stated Tom LoTurco, EDP Renewables’ director of development for Canada and Eastern U.S.

The Nation Rise project has been about seven years in development for EDP Renewables. Work began first in 2012 with construction of a 60-foot meteorological tower in the North Stormont area. A second 100-metre-tall tower was later erected, following which the company, through its subsidiary, EDPR Canada, contacted and secured agreements with 70 local landowners, both individuals and families, for access to a total of 12,000 acres of land, to serve as sites for more than a dozen wind turbine towers, along with a substation and other support facilities.

The project has been a source of controversy with a local citizens group filing a legal challenge against the project but failing to gain support from the Ontario Environmental Review Tribunal. North Stormont Township council has also approved an official declaration that the municipality is “an unwilling host” for the wind farm project.

 The Nation Rise Wind Farm is one of the few “green energy” projects that escaped cancellation, earlier this year, by the present Ford Progressive Conservative government. During his election campaign, Doug Ford promised to cancel many of the alternate energy projects approved by the previous Wynne Liberal government.

The Eastern Fields wind power project, proposed for The Nation Municipality and Champlain Township, was one alternate energy project which was cancelled.