SaskPower has announced that it wants to build its largest solar power facility yet in the Estevan area.
We don’t know where exactly this project is going to be located, but at 100 megawatts of power, it will be 10 times greater than anything SaskPower has tried before when it comes to solar. So it will take up a lot of space.
Once the announcement was made, the usual criticism began. You had some claiming that climate change is a hoax or a myth, so investments in solar and wind power are a waste. Others said this reflects the end of coal-fired power generation, and in turn, the end of carbon capture and storage technology.
There are probably a lot of people who would welcome solar power, and some who no doubt want to see it replace coal-fired power. You just won’t hear much from them in this part of the province.
Regardless of whether you’re in favour of solar power or not, and regardless of your reasons, a question to ask is why can’t we have both down here?
There’s a lot of potential with solar power and this project. The size is enormous. Once construction begins, you’ll have a lot of people involved. That’ll be great news for our hospitality sector and other businesses in the area. It will be one of the largest construction projects in the area for a long time.
Once it begins operations, it will mean jobs, but not as many as some might think. Solar power doesn’t carry nearly the employment benefits of coal-fired generation. If SaskPower doesn’t invest further in CCS, then this wouldn’t come close to offsetting the jobs lost at the mines.
You can’t fault SaskPower for looking at the Estevan area for solar power. You have the existing transmission line infrastructure around Estevan. Let’s make use of it. And Estevan has lots of hours of sunshine to work with.
SaskPower has looked at Estevan as an option for solar power in the past, but ultimately decided for another location. Those projects were nowhere near as large as what is being planned for here now.
The Crown corporation is also still a few years away from being forced to make a decision on whether to retrofit the Shand Power Station or Unit 6 at the Boundary Dam Power Station with CCS technology. We need to keep the pressure on SaskPower and continue with lobbying efforts, but the decision isn`t imminent.
We know that CCS works. Yes, there are still kinks that are being worked out. The CCS facility at Boundary Dam had a number of unscheduled outages over a seven-month span from July 2021 to February of this year. With each of those outages, the critics renewed their opposition, although they conveniently ignore the fact that CCS was very reliable in the previous years.
Solar power could be a very good support power option for retrofitted coal-fired power units with CCS technology. Heavy emphasis on support power option.
At this stage, solar power is not baseload power. That’s not to say that we won’t reach that point eventually. But we’re not there yet. And we won’t be there for a while.
As far as being a baseload power candidate, the geothermal plant that is being worked on in the southeast is far more viable at this time. Geothermal has proven to be a baseload source elsewhere.
We need legitimate baseload power options. For Saskatchewan at this time, CCS and coal remain the best option.
SaskPower missed the opportunity to have CCS technology applied to Units 4 and 5 at Boundary Dam. Hopefully, they don’t do the same with Unit 6 at Boundary Dam and with Shand.
So build solar power. Let’s get people here during the construction phase. Enjoy the economic spinoff. Let’s get the jobs here for those who will work at the site once it is finished. Bring people here to tour the plant.
We’re the Energy City. Solar and geothermal are sources of energy.
But we need to remember which source still has to come first.
