A playlist of our favourite Green Energy Futures stories from 2018.
By David Dodge and Scott Rollans
Looking back on 2018 it’s no surprise that solar PV was the secret sauce in all of our favourite Green Energy Futures stories.
Solar is the fastest growing source of renewable energy in the world and it’s an increasingly affordable way to produce clean energy. But it’s also a key ingredient in creating super energy efficient green buildings and sustainable institutions and grids.
We first talked to Alternative Energy Program boss Dr. Jim Sandercock six years ago when the program started and his biggest worry was finding jobs for their grads.
In a few short years, that has all changed and the outlook is rosy.
Future so bright
“We’re talking about a whole sale change of how we generate energy. So, for our alumni and for the people who have businesses in our industry we’re talking about an actual transition a wholesale transition of our energy system. The opportunities for companies and the opportunities for the alumni are huge,” says Sandercock.
We profiled one of those grads, Brandon Sandmaier, who left his six-figure job as a heavy duty mechanic in the oilsands to study Alternative Energy and he and business partner Jeremey Ferentz started Generate Energy, a solar and energy efficiency business even before graduating from NAIT.
We also profiled Rae-Anne Wadey, a young woman who was in the first alternative energy graduating class, struggled to find work at first and now, just a few years later is one of the most experienced installers in the solar patch. She also teaches at NAIT.
Solar grows 500 per cent in Alberta
Indeed, the solar industry has grown 500 per cent in Alberta in the last three years from six megawatts to 36 megawatts in 2018. Last year we profiled some iconic projects such as the huge project at Red Deer College.
“There’s over 3,600 solar panels that have been installed––one point six megawatts of solar production––as well as a major one-megawatt combined heat and power unit,” says Joel Gingrich, Dean of Trades and Technologies at Red Deer College.
They also swapped out a third of their lights, replacing them with LEDs. “The combination of all of that the energy produced in the energy saved is targeted at saving the campus over a million dollars in utility costs annually,” says Gingrich.
Generating your own electricity and producing your own heat factored into a few stories this year including one of our favourites on the first net-zero church and social housing project in Canada.
The Westmount Presbyterian Church teamed up with the Right at Home Housing Society to build a church and housing project that is financially and environmentally sustainable.
“All of the energy that this site uses, for both buildings, comes from the solar array on the roof,” says Peter Amerongen, of Habitat Studio. “The heating comes from a geothermal system, and the hot water comes from air-source heat-pump hot water tanks. The lighting is LED, and the appliances are super efficient.”
The church that once couldn’t afford to pay its utility bills is now revitalized and a school with slipping enrollment across the street has 40 new students.
First solar-powered department store in Canada
This same sort of long-term thinking was behind retailer Peter Simon’s efforts to power his stores with clean energy. First they installed a large 600 kilowatt solar system on an Edmonton store and then built the first net-zero department store in Canada in 2018.
“We felt after Londonderry we’ve learned a lot and that we were within striking distance of a zero energy store and so we took what we learned in Alberta and what we’ve been working on for five or six years, and we combined that here with a larger solar array we’ve got about one point three million kilowatt hours production annually,” explained Peter Simon, CEO of Simons.
The result: La Masion Simons opened the first net-zero major retail store in Canada. The 80,000 square foot store replaces a smaller 45,000 square foot store at Galeries de la Capitale mall in Quebec City.
Indeed affordable solar is also driving the evolution of super energy efficiency green homes. Another of our favorite stories was the Symons Gate Passive House built by Brookfield Residential in Calgary, Alberta. Who knew you could build a passive solar-heated, solar-powered home in the northern climes of Alberta where it gets to -30 degrees in the winter.
Solar–battery revolution in New Zealand
Perhaps our most fascinating story from 2018 was on the “solar-battery revolution” from New Zealand where Gary Holden the former CEO of ENMAX in Alberta now heads up a company called Pulse Energy.
After implementing time-of-use pricing half the retailers in New Zealand also converted those pesky fixed charges on your electricity bills to variable charges.
These two things mean that electricity is priced closer to its true value and that people adjust the timing of their consumption to reduce costs.
As a result, Holden’s company Pulse Energy is selling 250 solar battery systems a month in New Zealand because it’s one of the cheapest ways to expand the grid.
From us at Green Energy Futures we wish you the best of the holiday season and a very happy, green new year!
