Ernie Sinnott

Hi, everyone, before I step into Ernie’s voice, I’d just like to take a minute to explain why I wanted to include him tonight. Last summer, I got a call from Ed Sinnott, who explained that he had several containers of correspondence, business documents and media coverage of his father’s Wind Energy Company, and the legal battle that a local farmer raised in order to harvest a new kind of crop: the wind. After some discussion, I accepted Ed’s donation. We are far from complete in cataloguing this expansive collection or completing a permanent plan for it, but earlier this year, I’d read and seen enough to realize that Kootenai Brown needed to publicize this acquisition.

As you go through Pioneer Place, you can see the small display we’ve put together, and as we put together tonight’s list of Pioneers, I knew Ernie should be involved. Hard to believe as it is, 1984 is already forty-one years ago, and the present becomes the past quickly. History isn’t a place, it’s a progression of ideas and events and lessons, and a pioneer is more than plainsmen, homesteaders and explorers. Our museum is about builders, who show up at any time, and take the risks for a future that others will benefit from. For those who knew Ernie, which unfortunately I did not, I tell his story tonight in awe and respect.

Hello, my name is Alfred Ernest Sinnott. Were, all having a drink, so you might as well just call me “Ernie”. My father first settled in this area around 1898 from Summerside, Prince Edward Island, and he spent a number of years working for the Fred Godsal and J.J. Bowlen ranches.
Dad saved until he could file for his own homestead west of Pincher City on the South-east quarter of Section 14, and worked hard to plough in enough acreage to proved up his claim and received title in 1906. Dad married Bessie May Read in 1917. I was born in 1918, the oldest of four siblings, and I was followed by Olive, Annie and John.

We were all raised on the farm near Pincher Station, all growing up reading by a kerosene lantern. During the Depression, we all helped to build a win charger, a windmill that could produce just enough energy to run a few electric light bulbs in the house.

I grew up to farm alongside my dad, and Isabelle and I would take it over when my parents retired. When the Second World War broke out, I enlisted and took basic training at Red Deer, but exemptions made for agricultural workers kept me on the farm. However, I did volunteer to man home and civil defences for our area. In 1944, I married Barbara Isabelle Porter, from the Black Hills Ranch, at Maycroft. Barbara and I raised seven children, Barbara, George, Nancy , Leslie, Vernon, Ed and Michael.



In 1952, Alberta’s rural electrification initiatives brought a hydroelectric line to the farm gate, a steady stream of power that allowed the use of what seemed an endless supply of energy like we’d never experienced before. The old win charger was retired. But there is no free lunch and in time, we’d learn the true cost of energy.

In the meantime, as our family grew, so did the farm, flourishing to 2800 acres, and the family built a custom fertilizer operation at Pincher Station, and son Ed ran Pincher Farm Equipment for a few years. We were very active in the St. Michael’s church community, the Ladies’ Hospital Auxiliary, Kootenai Brown Pioneer Village and the community in general.

Then in 1982, at the age of 63, when I should have been thinking about kicking back – I took on a new challenge, but did I know that my retirement passion would kick off a revolution that would go past my time?

In 1983, I bought an 80-foot tall windmill from a Vermont company and erected it on the family farm, the first commercial electricity-producing windmill in Alberta.

Renewable generation was against the norm in the 1980s, but still, my windmill produced 2½ times the energy that I could use on my farm. The surplus energy, I was selling electricity back to the providing company, TransAlta Utilities. But for my energy, I was being paid a fraction of what TransAlta was charging to its customers.

My neighbors and I were paying 5.2 cents per kilowatt hour for power off the grid, but they only paid me 1.6 cents for what I was selling INTO the grid. In other words, they made 3.5 cents off what I produced.

In March 1984, I took TransAlta to an Energy Resources Conservation Board hearing to obtain a better price for my energy. I fought that battle and I won, and that was really what laid the groundwork for the renewable power industry of today.

In addition to popularizing windmill use, I also fought to make it pay to generate renewable energy in Alberta, and make it a feasible venture. ‘The wind blows here almost every day of the year, and my mill would start producing energy at 13 miles per hour. Under 8 miles per hour, I had to buy back out of the grid, paying 3 times the rate for my own energy.

I paid $87,000 for my windmill, (the modern equivalent of $241,680). At the time, I was one of just 30 Albertans using windmills to generate electricity. And in May 1984, my picture appeared on the cover of Alberta Report weekly magazine, with a feature article inside publicizing my dispute with TransAlta.

Before installing the machine, we were paying $6,000 a year in electric bills, making the windmill, with a lifespan of 25 to 30 years, worth the investment in less than 15 years.
But the mill would pay off in just seven years, if TransAlta would us fair prices for renewable generation on personal property.

When the windmill was installed, the rate was declared, not negotiated, I was told I would receive only $136 for his 8,500 kilowatt hours surplus, even though I would be paying the company $440 for that same power.

TransAlta argued that since their generating and transmission capacity remained the same, they couldn’t justify paying what they charge. Moreover, the commercial viability of wind energy was not as certain, as TransAlta argued, while their generation is available constantly.

“The major question to be resolved in the debate over wind as a source of electrical power in southern Alberta is whether the equipment can pay for itself. My fight with TransAlta, which dominated news cycles all over the province, proved this could be the case.

If nothing else, I and many other such producers had proved that pulling electricity from the wind and making it pay was more than a pipe dream. In 1987, I was awarded the wind industry’s major award in 1987 at the Canadian Wind Energy’s Association conference, held where else, right here in Pincher Creek.

Ernie and Isabelle retired in 1994, but my fight was ending, just as the world was learning about it. I passed away after a long illness in the fall of 1995. But the skyline of Alberta and the energy in the grid is beginning to illustrate that my efforts were not in vain – but in a weather vane.