The Complimentary Energy Decision Support Tool (CEDST) was conceived to be a renewable energy calculator designed specifically for rural sites and agricultural operations in Ontario, though could easily assess urban sites as well, and equipped with the ability to compare the feasibility of different technologies. The Wind Energy Calculator (WEC) component of the CEDST project was the focus of this thesis and was developed since research revealed no current wind prediction tools that met CEDST needs. Verification of WEC predictions found prediction accuracy to have bounds of +/- 60% on actual turbine energy production and was equivalent to the actual generation for 21% of cases. The discrepancy could have resulted from unusual annual wind speeds, which had no significant impact on project economics when analysed. Many cases revealed that 10 kW turbines are not feasible projects under the Feed-in Tariff program and that turbines begin to become economical around 35 kW. / University of Guelph, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), the Poultry Industry Council (PIC), Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA), and Egg Farmers of Ontario

La Directive européenne et les politiques de prévention du changement climatique conduisentà un développement important des Énergies Renouvelables pour la production d'électricité. Cecontexte politique est en train d'induire l'insertion massive de production intermittente d'origineéolien dans les réseaux électriques. Pour répondre à la question des limites de l'intégration de l'éoliendans les réseaux électriques, nous nous appuyons sur l'étude des aspects technique et économiques.Dans ce cadre, cette thèse s'intéresse d'une part à l'étude de l'efficacité des dispositifs d'incitationéconomique du point de vue de leur efficacité à stimuler la croissance de l'énergie éolienne et d'autrepart, aux problématiques techniques de court et long terme liées à l'intermittence de l'éolien. Dans lecourt-terme, les problèmes du réseau électrique ainsi que les ajustements dans le marché del'électricité sont abordés. Dans le long terme, l'impact de l'éolien sur la sûreté de fonctionnement estévalué au moyen d'un algorithme de calcul du crédit de capacité de l'éolien. / The development of Renewable Energy for electricity production has increased due to theEuropean policies and directives to prevent climate change. This political context is promoting amassive insertion of intermittent wind electricity production into electrical networks. There are stilldoubts about the limitations of integrating wind power into the electrical networks. For this reason,we focus on the study technical and economic aspects to approach these limitations. The firstpurpose of this research is to determine the effectiveness of the economical incentives policies inorder to stimulate growth in the wind power production. The second one is to evaluate the technicalproblems in the short and long term caused by the intermittency of wind power. In the short-term,the problems of power systems as well as the adjustments in the electricity market are discussed. Inthe long term, the impact of wind power reliability (in the network) is evaluated by using an algorithmto calculate the capacity credit of wind power.