Nunavut power utility’s solar installation starts to show results

An employee of the Qulliq Energy Corp. enters the Iqaluit power plant in March 2016, shortly after the 11 solar panels were installed on the side of the building. (FILE PHOTO)

The first grid-integrated renewable energy installation in Nunavut came with a hefty price tag, but the Qulliq Energy Corp.’s pilot solar project has started to produce results.

Since Nunavut’s energy corporation installed 11 panels along the side of its Iqaluit power plant in March 2016, the installation has produced 6,047 kilowatt hours of energy.

Just over two years into the pilot, the panels have saved roughly $1,350 in fuel costs, or about 1,430 litres of fuel, the agency said.

MLAs requested results of the pilot project during recent standing committee hearings into the auditor general’s report on climate change in Nunavut.

The project wasn’t cheap, at a cost of $73,000, money that came from the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency and National Resources Canada.

The cost to install the system was higher than usual, said QEC’s president and CEO, Bruno Pereira, because additional equipment was required to monitor its performance.

The QEC’s future solar power projects won’t require those extra costs, he said.

“As the first grid-integrated renewable energy installation in Nunavut, the purpose of the project was to test the reliability of an intermittent source of energy and provide valuable data on connecting future renewable energy systems to QEC’s power grids,” Pereira said in an email to Nunatsiaq News.

“Larger installations, with newer technologies, should see more efficiencies and higher fuel savings.”

The 2.86 kilowatt solar pilot project was initially set up to encourage Nunavut customers to connect solar panels to their homes, which in turn could link up to the city’s energy grid.

The QEC has just launched its net metering program, which will allow residential customers and municipalities to produce their own electricity through renewable energy generators, and then send any surplus energy back to the corporation.

In exchange, those customers will receive credits for future electricity use.

But Pereira told the standing committee hearings earlier this month that the corporation has yet to receive any applications to the program.

Nunavummiut can apply for funding from the Nunavut Housing Corp.’s home renovation program to help buy solar panels or wind energy systems for their home, and use that technology to receive a credit from the QEC under the new program.

The housing corporation’s home renovation program gives homeowners a chance to apply for up to $65,000 to upgrade their homes; $15,000 of that funding must be used for sustainable energy upgrades if the homeowner receives more than $50,000.