SaskPower. (file photo/paNOW Staff)

By Keaton Brown

Incentivizing Renewable Energy

SaskPower’s Power Generation Partner Program enters its second year

Jul 10, 2019 | 12:01 PM

SaskPower customers who save more renewable electricity than they consume will now have the opportunity to sell it back to the company.

SaskPower will be seeking applications for its 2019 Power Generation Partner Program (PGPP) in the fall. The program is looking to add another 10 MW of renewable and 25 MW of carbon-neutral electricity to its grid.

Now entering its second year, the PGPP allows customers to generate renewable or carbon-neutral electricity and sell it to SaskPower.

“In addition to incentivizing renewable technologies, the PGPP helps SaskPower’s oil and gas customers to reduce their emissions and reduce their exposure to a federal carbon tax,” Dustin Duncan, minister responsible for SaskPower, said. “The PGPP is yet another element supporting government’s Prairie Resilience climate change strategy and SaskPower’s goal of reducing carbon emissions 40 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030.”

Carbon-neutral technologies take carbon that would have otherwise existed and generate electricity with it.

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Renewable energies that are eligible for the program include solar, biomass, hydro and geothermal with projects ranging from 100 kW up to 1 MW. Eligible carbon-neutral, non-renewable technologies include flare gas and waste heat recovery with projects ranging from 100 kW up to 5 MW. There will be an annual cap for 10 MW per year for renewable technologies and 25 MW per year for carbon-neutral, non-renewable technologies.

“We were encouraged by the response to the first call for applications in 2018, which resulted in the approval of 38 customer self-generation projects through the PGPP,” Shawn Schmidt, SaskPower’s vice-president of distribution and customer services said. “For this year we have updated the selection criteria to ensure the program is cost-effective and generation facilities will be located where they can be accommodated by existing substations.”

“Last year there was a diversity of customers on the renewable energy side, including a few First Nations as well as one Hutterite colony. There were even a few large scale farm producers,” Joel Cherry, a spokesperson for SaskPower, said.

“This is different from just getting solar panels on your house and using that to power yourself, this is specifically for people who are generating enough power to sell it back to [SaskPower]” Cherry added. “You wouldn’t typically see small scale customers doing this but we do see all types of customers applying and being accepted into the program.”

The windows for applications into the PGPP will be open from October 23 to November 1, 2019.

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keaton.brown@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @battlefordsnow