NSCC to launch wind turbine technician program in 2026

Adam Cooke · CBC News

· Posted: Mar 27, 2025 5:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 11 minutes ago

Nova Scotia Community College officials person tapped a Cape Breton field for a caller one-year grade programme for upwind turbine technicians.

Port Hawkesbury's Strait Area Campus, which is adjacent to respective upwind vigor and greenish hydrogen projects successful the region, volition invited a yearly mean of 15 students to the caller programme opening successful the autumn of 2026.

The programme is the archetypal of its benignant successful Nova Scotia, according to Patty Charlton, the manager of NSCC's School of Technology and Environment. Prince Edward Island's Holland College besides has a upwind turbine technician program, portion New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador are preparing to roll retired akin courses, Charlton said.

In NSCC's case, Charlton pointed to the approaching 2030 deadline for Nova Scotia to execute 50 per cent of its energy procreation done upwind energy, and suggested that a shortage of upwind turbine technicians could hobble these efforts in the Strait country and astir the province. 

"In recognizing immoderate of the caller labour skills that are going to beryllium needed successful presumption of that translation of the vigor assemblage present successful Nova Scotia, the spread was the technicians needed to instal and support those offshore turbines themselves, which meant that we needed a caller programme to code that labour gap," Charlton said. 

For the archetypal 3 to 5 years of the program's operation, it volition ore connected onshore upwind turbines, since all of the 300-plus turbines present successful cognition astir Nova Scotia autumn into this category, she said. 

However, the people is expected to see an offshore component by 2035, she added, pointing to the beingness of the NSCC's Nautical Institute astatine the Port Hawkesbury field arsenic a large crushed for optimism.

"That means we person each the infrastructure we request to beryllium capable to pivot and supply the skills needed to operate, instal and support that infrastructure successful a marine environment," said Charlton.

"We're precise fortunate astatine the NSCC that we person specified a state-of-the-art installation that's already up and moving astatine the Strait Area Campus."

The Nautical Institute is equipped with a marine navigation simulator and aggregate enactment vessels. Strait Area Campus main Vivek Saxena said the field besides boasts a question vessel for marine training, a free-fall lifeboat and different grooming amenities astatine the Port Hawkesbury waterfront, and a occurrence grooming facility. 

"Some of the grooming which is required for the offshore upwind manufacture aligns with our assets astatine the college," Saxena said. "So it was a truly casual prime for the assemblage to find the programme wherever astir of the assets lie."