Setback for Katabatic Power

The anticipated summer construction phase for the Mount Hays windfarm has been pushed back towards the fall or possibly next spring.

Apparently the ambitious construction schedule became the victim of unfinished financing and regulatory processes, Katabatic Power is hoping to have all completed by the late summer or early fall and at that time a decision will be made as far as construction timetable goes.

The Northern View has the details posted on their on line website.

Construction time line pushed back
By Shaun Thomas
The Northern View
May 09 2007

When Katabatic Power secured a B.C. Hydro contract for a wind farm on Mount
Hays on July 27, 2006, company officials had hoped to start construction on the project this month. However it now appears that the construction on the 25.2 MegaWatt power project won’t get underway until this fall at the earliest.

“We are hoping to get our contribution agreement from the Federal Government in the coming months. We’re just working on our construction plan and we’re in the middle of closing on our financing and those sorts of things,” said Katabatic’s Chief Operating Officer Jonathan Raymond, noting that the company was also finishing up the land tenure process for the project site.

“Hopefully we will have the whole package wrapped up by late-summer or early fall, and then it depends on where we are and how close to winter we are as to whether we start construction in the late fall/early winter or wait until the spring of 2008 to start construction.”

And while residents may not be seeing much construction on the project over the summer, Raymond says that people on the North Coast shouldn’t be concerned about its future.

“We’re trying to build the first wind farm in the province, so there is all kind of regulatory work being done by the government and everyone is doing the best they can. It just doesn’t go as fast as you would like it to go and we just have to wait for the various processes to work their way through.”

“It is just sort of inevitable project stuff and we are just working through it as quickly as we can,” he said.