SaskPower has announced the location for the first utility-scale solar power facility in Saskatchewan, and it won’t be in the Estevan area.
The 10-megawatt facility will be constructed in the rural municipality of Coulee, to the east of Swift Current. SaskPower had also considered Estevan and Morse as possible locations for the project.
An announcement was made June 17.
The Crown corporation also announced that Saturn Power is the successful proponent for the solar power site.
Jordan Jackle, a consultant for media relations and issues management for SaskPower, said the company issued a request for proposals (RFP) in 2016, seeking for proponents for the project. Once the RFP process began, and they knew how many proposals they were looking for, SaskPower put together a lot of information for what Jackle called the SaskPower choice, which was the RM of Coulee.
The process for determining SaskPower’s preferred site is pretty involved, he said.
“You start really wide, and you then narrow it down by areas where you simply can’t have such a facility, and that includes places where there are environmental considerations and what not,” said Jackle.
From there, it gets narrowed down to where the interconnection cost is reasonable, with the amount of money it would cost to connect the project to the grid.
“That kind of varies, depending on a number of factors, for example the distance away from a sub-station,” he said.
“Would a new sub-station have to be built, potentially, to support such a project? Is there a sub-station nearby but it’s already full and there’s no expansion to be done there?”
Other factors considered include whether the land owner is interested in selling.
While SaskPower communicated its site to the proponents, they were free to share their own ideas for the best possible location.
Selecting a preferred site helps to give the proponents an idea of the potential interconnection costs.
“You could have a great project and go through the work of proposing a great project, but without knowing the interconnection cost, because that often comes up after, the interconnection could be simply too high to see that project go forward,” said Jackle.
Jackle didn’t specify why the RM of Coulee was viewed as the preferred site. He also didn’t say what the strengths and weaknesses were for Estevan as a potential location.
“If there was a company pitching a site for Estevan, that would have been considered equally for the others,” said Jackle.
Jackle said the length of time was not out of the ordinary for a competitive process. The evaluation process was something they spent a lot of time on to get it right, and the governance process was also needed from SaskPower’s end.
SaskPower and Saturn Power have signed a 20-year power purchase agreement for the 10-megawatt project. The Highfield Solar Project could be in service before the end of 2019.
Saturn Power is a renewable energy company, headquartered in Baden, Ont. It has over 100 megawatts of solar, wind and energy storage projects in operation and construction worldwide.
During the RFP phase, SaskPower evaluated 16 proposals from 12 of the 34 pre-qualified proponents. The Crown corporation stated all proposals were evaluated equally through an open and transparent process. SaskPower will now start preparing for the next competitive process for an additional 10 MW project, which it hopes to launch in early 2019.
“There’s going to be 20 megawatts through a partnership with the First Nations Power Authority, and there will be other opportunities in terms of customer generation and community solar as well,” said Jackle.
SaskPower plans to have 60 megawatts of solar generation by 2021 as the price of solar continues to fall.
Ray Roth, the co-founder and chief operating officer of Saturn Power, said this is the first time the company has worked in Saskatchewan.
“It’s rural. We like working in farm areas,” said Roth. “It’s an open area. There should be a good labour pool here. So we’re very excited to be working in Saskatchewan.”
At least 100 people will be employed during the construction phase, but only two will be working once it’s finished.
“That’s why it’s so effective to have solar. It quietly works by itself. There’s other people involved, monitoring it remotely, and there’s grass-cutting which some of the local people will be involved in. We always have really good working relationships with local contractors and farmers.”
It will cost about $1.5 million per megawatt of power to bring the project to Saskatchewan, he said.
