Hydro-Québec has announced partnerships with two Indigenous communities and a regional government in the Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean region that will open the door to a C$9-billion wind farm, a first major step in the mammoth utility’s plan to triple its wind power capacity by 2035 and wean the province off fossil fuels.

The deal covers a 5,000-square-kilometre area known as the Chamouchouane zone. “The utility said the zone has the potential to host up to 3,000 megawatts of wind power capacity and several wind farms, which would make it one of the biggest wind power sites in North America,” the Globe and Mail reports.

“With our local partners, we will embark on a common and collaborative process that will have benefits for all of Quebec,” CEO Michael Sabia said in the statement. “Together, we’ll lay the foundations for well-planned and coordinated wind development.”

The Chamouchouane development is part of a development strategy that aims to deploy 10,000 megawatts of installed wind power capacity by 2035, the Globe says. The project is expected to be the first of a handful of other mega-sized wind farms in the province, with la Haute-Côte-Nord and the Baie-James regions noted as possible locations for future deployments.

So far, most wind installations in Quebec have been small- to medium-sized and developed by the private sector. Sabia said deploying large wind projects is important to reach economies of scale for their construction.

“The world has changed a lot, and our energy context has changed a lot,” he told a news conference in late May. “Today, wind power is an essential part of the diversification of our system,” and “projects of scale are necessary to achieve economies of scale.”

“Based on recent wind power projects announced in Quebec, notably the Des Neiges development, the Chamouchouane zone could see as many as 600 wind tower turbines in place,” the Globe writes.

At least one expert said the project will face financial risk, supply chain challenges, and demand management issues, all requiring Hydro-Québec to adapt operations to meet the new challenges associated with larger projects.

“Once fully online, this investment will… bring important operational challenges to Hydro-Québec, as the corporation will now have to manage this major source of variable power on its network,” said François Bouffard, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Montreal’s McGill University.

In an email to The Energy Mix, Bouffard expressed “hope for a mechanism for de-risking this kind of project for the First Nations communities involved,” noting that the communities don’t have “the deep pockets of Hydro-Québec or of the Quebec government.”

The partners involved with the project include Hydro-Québec, Pekuakamiulnuatsh First Nation, the Conseil des Wemotaci Atikamekw, and the regional county municipality (MRC) of Domaine-du-Roy. In a release, the utility said the First Nations and the MRC will “actively participate in projects as partners” and as “shareholders, they will be able draw recurrent, autonomous income that can be allocated to priorities of their choosing.” Hydro-Québec, meanwhile, will act as shareholder and “maître-d’oeuvre”, or general contractor, with responsibility for overall planning, development, and operations.

“Our communities must be at the heart of large-scale projects such as this,” said Pekuakamiulnuatsh First Nation Chief Gilbert Dominique. “This historic partnership represents an important milestone in the lasting relationship that we hope to see develop between First Nations, Hydro-Québec, and our partners.”

Ghislain Picard, chief of the Assembly of First Nations of Quebec and Labrador, has previously shared “doubts about the [financial] capacity of communities to invest in such projects.” Picard has called for the formation of a government-backed investment fund for First Nations to level the playing field.

Bouffard said the project will also face short-term challenges with supply chains, human resources, and project management.

“The scale of this project will demand the mobilization of a very large number of construction crews, while the specialized construction labour market is already strained in the province,” he wrote. “Adding to this, right now globally there is a race to procure large-scale wind generation and power transmission assets.”

In the longer term, Hydro-Québec will also have to manage the wind farm’s variability, though Bouffard said the province’s flexible hydropower generation will be able to respond to fluctuations in output with the right forecasting data. Being able to rely on hydropower to balance wind power’s intermittency also means the project won’t need to be paired with energy storage like variable renewables elsewhere.

More worrisome than managing variable supply, Bouffard added, will be how the corporation dispatches generation during periods of low demand. “No matter how high or low the demand is, the incentive for Hydro-Québec will be to maximize the wind power output of the wind farm as a way to keep water behind its dams,” he wrote. That may mean decommitting redundant hydropower turbines from the system, which may lead to problems if there is a sudden loss of generation.

“Obviously, Hydro-Québec will have to investigate such edge cases and develop adequate strategies, which, most likely, will involve reducing the amount of wind generation on the system during those times in the year” when good winds align with low demand, said Bouffard.

Community consultations for the project are expected to begin next month. The partners have not released a target completion date for the project, the Montreal Gazette says.