It’s easy to associate our neighbours across the provincial border with wind energy. As you cross into Nova Scotia you can’t miss the slowly spinning blades of about 15 turbines operated by Capstone Infrastructure (and if Capstone’s proposed expansion passes muster with the Nova Scotia government, there could be another dozen on the horizon.)
But head over into the Amherst industrial park and you’ll see another impressive, though much smaller renewable energy sight: about 4500 solar panels installed at a solar farm collecting energy on behalf of about 130 Nova Scotia Power customers, all paying a monthly fee to help run the pilot community solar program.
“Community solar is a way for us to offer solar energy to all Nova Scotians,” says Shawn Connell, the director of customer solutions at Nova Scotia Power, who owns the project. “It doesn’t matter if you live in an apartment building, if you live in a condo, if your house can’t support solar panels, or you may have a roof that’s not quite situated in the right way to optimize the sun,” says Connell. “This allows you to get access to solar in increments that you’re able to manage.”
The Amherst community solar garden represents just a small percentage of the generating power of its wind turbine neighbours, but the 10-acre lot will still produce enough energy “to power roughly 240 homes, or if you look at it from an electric vehicle perspective, 700 electric vehicles,” says Connell. Anywhere from 200 to 400 customers will be able to subscribe to the program, paying a small premium to cover the operating cost of solar garden. And then, just as if they had installed the panels on their own home, over time they will recoup the costs as their investment generates solar energy.
“A customer can subscribe to a certain amount of energy production from the solar garden,” says Connell, paying $6.86 a month per kilowatt, up to a maximum of 100 kilowatts. “And then the customer in turn gets all of the energy produced from that subscription. They get a credit every month for the solar energy that’s produced on their bill,” says Connell. Customers are credited 5.603 cents per kilowatt hour of actual energy produced by their share of panels.
Connell says the project is fully covered by participating customers, meaning that those who are not participating do not help cover the costs of the program.
Connell estimates that the premium paid by participants amounts to about $3 per month in the first number of years. But “over the life of the asset, which would be 25 years,” says Connell, “there would be savings, depending on the amount of energy that you’re producing.”
Nova Scotia Power also received contributions from the federal government to make the project happen. The feds put out $3.5 million of the $5 million cost to build the solar garden, and the provincial government and town of Amherst are also listed as partners on the project.
The project is not just piloting a community-funded subscription system, but also testing out new technologies that could help maximize the energy potential of solar production. The panels being used are bifacial, explains Connell, meaning that they collect energy from both sides. NS Power will be experimenting with ground covers to see which provide the best reflective properties.
The whole project is part of Smart Grid Atlantic, a federal initiative involving both Nova Scotia Power and NB Power, which aims to “deploy and test smart energy technologies to learn how they impact our provincial power grids and how they can benefit customers in the future,” according the project website.
NB Power is spearheading another community solar project with another Sackville neighbour: the town of Shediac is slated to go live with a community solar collection system sometime in 2022.
Connell says the Smart Grid projects will help Nova Scotia Power reach its climate goals. “It’s allowing us to understand a variety of different technologies that will help us transition to the state that we’re working towards in the province, which is net zero,” says Connell.
About 60% of the electricity Nova Scotia Power distributes comes from renewable sources, which sounds high compared to the 44% renewable share produced by NB Power. But Nova Scotia still uses fossil fuels to supply 40% of its supply, whereas in New Brunswick, fossil fuels account for only about 20% of supply, thanks to a hefty share coming from nuclear power.
In Nova Scotia, “the targets that we’re working towards right now are 80% renewable by 2030, and the elimination of coal generation,” says Connell. “So all of these technologies that we’re piloting at the moment will be part of helping us transition.”