Photo courtesy of nvgreenlake.ca
The Village of Green Lake is one step closer to generating its own solar power.
The community, northeast of Meadow Lake, is installing solar panels on the roof of the community hall this week to help supplement their current power needs.
In the last six months, the area north of Meadow Lake, experienced a number of power outages that left some customers without power for days.
Mayor Ric Richardson says the system will not only power the hall, but also feed electricity back into the power grid. Richardson says the 31 kilowatt project could power as many as 300 homes during peak sunshine hours in the summer.
Richardson says the solar power project is not intended to be their primary source of energy, but it will be a clean option to help reduce electricity costs. He says this could save the community up to $7,000 annually to power the community hall.
He says Green Lake started looking at alternatives to supplement their power needs a couple of years ago, and looked at wind energy as well as solar. In the end, solar won out because of the ease of expanding the project. Richardson says the cost of wind turbines was also a factor the council took into consideration.
He says a number of sources of funding brought the costs down considerably, with the $138,000 investment, support federally through the Canada 150 Infrastructure Program and provincially with a rebate through SaskPower and a private company out of Ontario.
Richardson says he and members of council met with Bullfrog Power a couple of years ago at the First Nations Energy Forum and found out the opportunities they offered. After doing a feasibility study, they applied for a grant and will receive $20,000 to help fund the project.
Richardson says that SaskPower will be doing tests over the next few weeks to ensure the system is working properly before they can begin using the panels to power the community hall.
A ceremony will be held on May 24th to flick the switch and start harnessing their own power.