5 MW solar farm developed by Peace River co-operative

Markham interviews Colin Smith, project manager of the Peace Energy Cooperative, which recently received approval from the Alberta Utilities Commission to go ahead with the Peace River Energy Project, a 5 MW grid-connected solar farm.

What is Energi Talks?

Journalist Markham Hislop interviews leading energy experts from around the world about the energy transition and climate change.

Markham: 00:04

Welcome to episode 289 of the Energy Talks podcast. I'm energy and climate journalist, Markham Hislop. The Peace Energy Cooperative recently received approval from the Alberta Utilities Commission to go ahead with the Peace River Energy Project, a 5 megawatt grid connected solar farm. The project is Western Canada's first cooperative cooperatively owned and operated solar farm, and it's funded by the community members of the cooperative. The next step is an investment share offering to the 635 members.

Markham: 00:37

This sounds like a fascinating project, and I'll be talking to project manager Colin Smith about it. So welcome to the interview call.

Colin: 00:46

Yeah. Thank you very much for having me. Glad to be here.

Markham: 00:49

Well, renewable energy has been in the news in Alberta lately, since last August when the, the Alberta government implemented a 7 month moratorium. They lifted it on February 29th, and that created a whole firestorm of new controversy because a lot of observers said that it was more you've traded a hard moratorium for a soft moratorium in some ways. And the question then was, how much how what effect the uncertainty of all of this regulatory, upheaval would have on projects? Because there were quite a few of them in the queue, and yours is the first one coming out of the moratorium that was approved by the regulator. Maybe give us an an overview of the project itself.

Colin: 01:40

Yeah. So like you mentioned, it's a 5 megawatt or technically 4.99, megawatt, AC onto the grid project. It's located 1 kilometer, east. No. Sorry.

Colin: 01:53

West. My apologies. West of the town of Peace River in the MD of Peace 135. Peace Energy Cooperative has been around since 2003. Originally started, related to a wind project in Dawson Creek.

Colin: 02:07

And, yeah, for the last since 2019, this project was kick started, at least the idea, with the pursuit of a municipal climate change action center grant, which is a a legacy of or was a legacy of Energy Efficiency Alberta, which was an NDP, program. The project wasn't awarded those funds, but, going through the paperwork and the application process for that grant showed that there was a decent possibility for a project, and there was a great community support in the Peace River region of, Alberta and BC. And so for the past 3 years, 2020 to to now, I guess that's almost 4 years, The Peace River Peace Energy Cooperative has been working towards this project. So it's located on a piece of underutilized pasture land that hasn't seen crops in over 20 years. Yeah.

Colin: 03:05

So we started our multi season wildlife studies and the the regulatory process, over 2 years ago once we secured a lease on this piece of land. And we were 2 weeks away from submitting our checklist application. So our project in the big scheme of things is pretty small. 5 megawatts is kinda like the lowest size of solar, grid tied solar project you would wanna build. But for a cooperative on doing a first project is, it's about the right size.

Colin: 03:35

So, yeah, we were 2 weeks away, and then the moratorium was put in place.

Markham: 03:39

This is, this is very interesting, and I wanna talk to you about your members because, I've been up in your area a couple of times. I have to admit I'm not a a frequent visitor, but I know the reputation from people I've talked to is that it's oil and gas, it's farming, it's ranching, it's it's very kind of blue collar. It is not the kind of region that you would expect to find a lot of support for renewables. So tell us about your members.

Colin: 04:09

Yeah. They're, over 630 of them, and it's growing on a regular basis. The majority of them are centered around Dawson Creek, BC. That's where the cooperative is based. But the Peace Region straddles the Alberta, BC border.

Colin: 04:28

The Peace River watershed, it's long history, in the history of First Nations and, Canada. And yeah. So in 2,000 and between 2,003 and 2,009, the cooperative did a lot of community engagement. I believe they hosted over 30, community, public meetings around the Bear Mountain Wind Project, which is was Western Canada's first, wind farm on Bear Mountain Ridge just outside of Dawson Creek. And that those meetings, really brought, the community together.

Colin: 05:02

You know, every community is diverse. Some voices are louder than others. So the ones that you mentioned of, oil and gas and, you know, all the you mentioned farming and, working Ranching. Ranching, all of those, you know, there's diversity within all those communities. So, yeah, essentially, it's all in who you know and, friendships and connections of, people in the region, were, you know, leveraged and, built upon for these community meetings.

Colin: 05:27

And I think by the end of 2009, once the Bear Mountain Wind Project was built, and just a little history, it was started the land lease was secured by the cooperative, but, it turned out to be a $100,000,000 project. So quite out of the budget of a a cooperative with with 300 or 400 members at the time. So they did cooperative was, part of the project in the early stages, and got the community behind it, and then it was essentially funded, and completed by Aeliolis Wind and, AltaGas. But the the cooperative still receives, an investment royalty from that project. And, yeah, that's yeah.

Colin: 06:05

The members are diverse. Most of them centered around the peace region, but we actually have members in every province and territory, across Canada.

Markham: 06:12

Now this is interesting. So I'm gonna I'm gonna just boil it down to really simple, and you're gonna you'll probably cringe when you hear this. But is it hippies, cowboys, and rig workers? Or Okay. You know, one of or is it one of those groups, or all of them kind of, you know, put their differences aside and cooperated on

Colin: 06:32

this? Yeah. I'd say it's, probably a bit of everything. We've got, you know, doctors, lawyers, teachers, farmers, counselors, some hippies, I'm sure. Yeah.

Colin: 06:47

Kind of the whole diversity of the region is all represented, in our members, and then membership's also open to people across Canada. So there's peep people that share the values of wanting to see community owned renewable energy projects, wherever they may be. And, yeah, so our our cooperative is unique in that it membership is open to all Canadians.

Markham: 07:09

Colin, given the opposition that other wind and solar projects have faced in rural Alberta, which was, the government said, one of the reasons why it put a a pause, quote, unquote, on renewables development last year. But it sounds like your community took the time to organize, talk out its differences, talk out at the problems, get everybody built basically, build a consensus, then you went and did the project. As opposed to a big developer comes in like, I had Dan Balaban from Greengate on a couple you know, about a month ago. You know, they're a big they're a big developer. They do, like, 500 megawatt solar projects That's quite a bit bigger than yours.

Markham: 07:55

But I imagine from what I've heard and seen, you know, it looks like a company like that comes in. They they lease the land. They they maybe don't do the kind of consultations that you do or your community did, then they maybe run into problems. People objecting to, you know, solar panel recycling or whatever, that whatever their issue is. But I wonder if what's your opinion on the importance of doing the organizing organizing and consultations before you do the project?

Colin: 08:30

Oh, I think it's a a very key part of, a successful process and any large project that is, you know, affecting land and the area that people live in. Yeah. Doing the community engagement beforehand is, essential. And And I think a lot of large developers see it as a risk to potentially do that, more, you know, long term and, community like, on the ground community engagement, because, you know, loudest voices in the room. But, really, it should be part of the process.

Colin: 09:06

The AUC regulatory process does not yeah. Community engagement isn't high on the on the priority list or the requirements for the renew for the AUC process. It you know, by the book, yes. It is. You have to, do stakeholder, notifications and mail outs to all the landowners in the area within a certain radius, but it's a pretty, on there's no face to it.

Colin: 09:30

You're not knocking on doors. You're not talking to people in an in-depth way in a community setting. So, you know, I see how the AUC process, feels like it checks that box, but there's very rarely a requirement to get everybody in the same room to host multiple meetings over a long period of time, and that's really where the community can come together.

Markham: 09:54

I, I think, in the reporting that I did on the moratorium, that's one of the things that came to the fore is that this is often a top down approach. It's the the developer and the regulator and maybe the farmer or the landowner that's, that's leasing the land, and other folks in the community, generally, their the way they participate is to oppose. And they join a group that's opposed, and then they lobby about community solar, because this seems to be an example of the kinds of community solar projects that the Americans are trying to get up and running, and they've done an okay job. I think I interviewed someone last year who said that there were maybe, like, a 190, community solar projects across the country, but far less than what they had hoped for. Mhmm.

Markham: 10:50

And they blamed the regulatory regime. There wasn't you know, there were there was a it was still geared to utility scale, not community scale, that sort of thing. Of course, in Alberta, that's different because you have a whole opens a whole deregulated wholesale market, deregulated generation, and anybody who wants to build a plant can connect to the grid and has that right, and then you compete in the wholesale market with other generators. So it's a little in that sense, Alberta's market has actually got a leg up for community solar projects. Yep.

Markham: 11:23

And it seems to me that that might be one of the ways to get around some of these, I'll call them nimby. I'm sure community members would object to that. But, you know, some of the local opposition, can be muted. It can be overcome by bringing those people in, bringing the loud voices in opposition into the the group, talking to them, consulting with them, taking, you know, take, ameliorating their concerns, that sort of thing. Just your thoughts on that.

Colin: 11:59

Yeah. I think it's, the way to go, but, it's also, very challenging for, well, the sis like you say, the the system is built for a top down approach. Big money, large developers coming in and imposing a project on a community because of, you know, be it the transmission interconnections or the the land rate or the solar resource. And it leads to that polarization of, you know, developer and regulator against the local residents. And it's there's no, real community benefit.

Colin: 12:32

But from a community, the community's project lens, if yeah. If that I don't I don't think that process is very well facilitated at all. We're the first ones and in Alberta as far as we know that are doing anything like it, and we are essentially the developer. But the system's set up where essentially the municipality or the air region's residents can organize in a way that's not, you know, not opposing. It could be opposing, but they can say, we want a stake in this project as well.

Colin: 13:02

Like, we're not the landowner, but we live in the area, and that's where, yeah, the community benefit agreements can come in. So a developer and, can work with the community and have some sort of cost, like, yeah, benefit agreement, be it just a, you know, a flat fee or a donation or whatever it might be to a a local re you know, regional group or the municipality specifically. But it's, yeah, it's not an easy system to navigate, and it usually leads to big money and experienced developers imposing a project because local landowners and residents, it's very hard to understand how to, you know, work through these things, from that up bottom up perspective.

Markham: 13:44

Interesting that you bring up community benefit agreements because that's been tried with northern indigenous communities for a long time and with some success. There are some downsides to it in that context, but it has been, I from my observation, anyway, fairly successful. I have a question for you that comes out of BC Hydro's recently recently released 10 year capital plan. So the the BC NDP came into power in 2017. They brought in clean BC in either 18 or 19, and they, one of the things that they were talking about is electrifying the economy.

Markham: 14:20

You know? More heat pumps. I live in British Columbia. I've got a heat pump. But many many of my neighbors now are starting to get electric vehicles.

Markham: 14:29

So this is direct the the direction the government wanted to go, but it never gave policy direction to the utility, the BC Hydro. But it finally did, and Hydro responded with this 10 year capital plan. They're gonna spend $36,000,000,000, and they're not gonna build any more hydro dams. That was the thing that really got me. They're going to enter into power purchase agreements with indigenous communities, with, independent power producers, and then communities, community organizations like yours.

Markham: 15:00

And I wonder, given the fact that once you've done all the consultation, like, you've you've built a consensus in the community, does that then present opportunities for you to say, hey. You know what? Maybe we could do a 100 megawatt or a 500 megawatt project and enter into a PPA with BC Hydro, and this could be a big thing for the for the community. Is that the way you're kind of looking at this?

Colin: 15:25

Potentially. So we went to Alberta. Like, the cooperative is based in Dawson Creek, BC. And before yeah. As you spoke to, the the regulatory, system there was not in favor of community owned projects or any grid connected independent power producers.

Colin: 15:43

So that's why the pro this project's been pursued in Alberta. But, yeah, there's this been this recent announcement, which I'll admit I'm not, a 100% familiar with. But, yeah, we are are we look at the Peace River Energy Project as, you know, the first of many and a template where we're putting in a lot of sweat equity and, learning the regulatory and the the financial process behind the whole, building a relatively small scale solar farm. But, yeah, to duplicate that in BC would essentially be starting from scratch because the the regulatory process is going to be different. The yeah.

Colin: 16:19

All those different pieces are different. So our template is to have, a project that is, invest like, members and community members can invest in through this investment share offering, and those investment shares are available will be available across Canada. And that allows for, First Nations, your average just average, income earner to make a small scale investment that will also be RSP and TFSA eligible as well as accredited investors. So most, investments are, you know, only eligible to accredited investors or sophisticated investors, not your average, you know, just your average community member. So we're putting a lot of work into our investment share offering.

Colin: 17:05

There's a whole regulatory process for that that is almost equally as, challenging to navigate as the electricity power generation in Alberta. But, yeah, we're putting in all this effort in order to maximize the reach and prove that we can make this work in a small scale. And then, yeah, we hope to increase it, or, like, replicate it and keep adding numbers. I don't know if we'll how fast we'll reach the 100 megawatt or the 500 megawatt scale. But, yeah, we've we're learning a lot, and, this project, once it's up and running, will be a beacon to look at for other cooperatives in Alberta.

Colin: 17:42

And we'll see how this, 10 year capital plan for, BC works out, but we'll definitely be looking at that. But right now, this is our our core focus is this project.

Markham: 17:51

Sure. Fair enough. And and it's very impressive that you've done all this work. I mean, I you know, 30 years ago when I was living in Saskatchewan and and was kind of involved in this community economic development kind of work, getting it's like herding cats. A lot of

Colin: 18:06

cats. Mhmm.

Markham: 18:06

And some grouchy cats. And so, you know, I mean, it's not an easy process. I have a lot of respect for the the work that you've done up there, and and I would hope that this is serves as a template for other communities within Alberta and BC, because, once if everybody, does it as a one off and nobody learns from anybody else, then that's a tremendous amount of energy and learning that has to be. Whereas, if one group makes mistakes, it's like it's like in the US. Everybody looks to California for innovations because they started early, and they're making all the mistakes and figuring things out.

Markham: 18:42

And why would we wanna do that in Nevada or Colorado, when we could just look over the border and go, oh, they oops. That's they made that mistake. We don't wanna do that. So the, one of the things I've learned in reporting about the American electricity system is the emphasis there on distributed energy resources. So I mentioned community solar, so that's something that they're trying to get going.

Markham: 19:09

The Department of Energy is putting a lot of money into virtual power plants, which are basically aggregators. So if there are rooftop solar or maybe it could even be small community solar for that matter. And so the the aggregator, has a system that that allows it to put the power into the grid at the at the optimum time to earn the optimum, revenue for the members. There is demand response. There's all of these technologies that are just now coming into the market that are designed to be distributed.

Markham: 19:43

They're small scale. They're they allow flexibility. They'll you know, and system operators are really interested in them. And I'm wondering the extent to which distributed energy resources have figured into the con conversations that you've had with community members.

Colin: 20:00

Yeah. It's, it's the vision. I'd say the vision is a bit disconnected from reality, especially on our project. You know? We're in the ATCO.

Colin: 20:09

ATCO is the distribution and transmission owner in in the area, and they are I don't know, challenging to work with. I won't speak too poorly, but they're just a behemoth of bureaucracy and, process. And it, essentially, they are a gatekeeper to the distributed energy system. And so, you know, just building a prod like, we can do what we can with our project. But once once it hits the the distribution system, we have no say in what what happens, there.

Colin: 20:39

And so, yeah, that's where there's a disconnect in community, ownership and commute, but, you know, it's it is the way it is, and, it's part of having a reliable grid. But, yeah, I I hope that there's more evolution. I'd I'd say that this current government is probably heading us in the other direction, more, big business and, you know, top down rather than, you know, distributed small business and, diversified management. But, yeah, that's the vision. And then I wanna speak to that there's numerous other solar cooperatives in Alberta that are are working on this in their own way.

Colin: 21:18

Peace Energy Cooperative is definitely taking the lead on a grid grid scale size. We're the only project or only cooperative that's doing a, you know, a large, grid connected project, but they're, a few I'll name. There is, the Solar Power Investment Cooperative of Edmonton OR Spice, who are getting started on doing, behind the meter or microgen projects. Essentially, let's say there's a the food bank, for example. I don't actually know if they're doing this.

Colin: 21:44

They'll pay for and install the system on top of the food bank and have a PPA with the food bank, reduce the food bank's bills and essentially split the difference. And, and then there's Bow Valley Green Energy out of, Canmore that are doing a similar thing. They actually have a couple projects up and running. And, yeah, there's rumblings of other cooperatives starting or have started. So that kinda yeah, there is a legacy of cooperatives over a long period of time in Alberta.

Colin: 22:10

The rural electrification associations, which were, you know, early, turn of the century. And that's kinda yeah. I think the cooperative movement waned a bit, but, we're seeing a revival of, community members that wanna see this work in their communities and are, organizing around it. And then there's a national, layer to that too. There's, cooperatives that have been around for a long time.

Colin: 22:34

Vancouver, Ottawa, Toronto, like VRec, ORec, TREC, and those have all come together, and we're just forming, or we just formed a new cooperative of cooperatives called Community Energy Cooperatives of Canada. And we'll be sharing knowledge across across the country even though each province is a whole regulatory, like, you know, you can't do replicate things provincially, but there's lots of lessons, to be shared and, yeah, support. So there's some cool things happening in in the space.

Markham: 23:06

See, isn't that interesting? Because, Alberta's system is divided into, generation, which is unregulated, transmission and distribution, which are regulated, and retail, which is unregulated again. And so what the what happens is this is generally seen as a big advantage for Alberta, but as you know, given that your comments about ATCO as a gatekeeper, I mean, that is one of the big criticisms of the utilities is they gatekeep the system, and they keep innovation out that isn't in their best interest. And and in the US, there's been a lot of talk about that and a lot of, legislation passed to force the utilities to not gatekeep or to open that up to smaller players, like yourself. And it's fascinating that in BC Hydro, where you have a Crown Corporation and is vertically integrate, it controls everything.

Markham: 24:03

Right? All 4 of those functions are done within the utility, and they are notorious, absolutely notorious for being difficult to to deal with if you're a small player like you are. But then you go on the other side of the border, and you just got a different player with a different set of problems who is also gatekeeping. And I think what what that speaks to, and this is just my personal opinion, but, you know, in Canada, we need to address this issue of opening the system up to innovation, because that's really what you guys are. You're innovating a business model, or innovating a model, an ownership model, let's say.

Markham: 24:42

And that ownership model has lots of potential, but there are impediments to it. Right? And and the gatekeepers are 1, regulation is is another. There's all kinds of stuff. And it's and as you say, governments are, the one in Alberta is not friendly to community based kind of stuff.

Markham: 25:04

They like to do the top down, favor the incumbents, and I find that I find it just fascinating that in all of the we're in the midst of rapid technological change, and it's social and political impediments that are slowing down that adoption of that those new technologies in Alberta and BC. Anyway, a bit of a rant, but that just an observation.

Colin: 25:32

I fully agree with that. And, yeah. And then there's also the rapid global change of, yeah, scale of change in on multiple fronts. And I just don't think that governments or large, yeah, large business have like, they're not they're anti they're not antifragile. They are fragile, and they're stuck as business as usual.

Colin: 25:54

And, I don't think, yeah, it's the small scale that is gonna be nimble and be able to adapt, but it is being gatekeep. And, yeah, Ako has its own, you know, business to, run and, yeah, innovation on from the grassroots is more of a fly in in their hair rather than what they really wanna focus on. And, yeah, there's definitely integration between current government and and, yeah, boards of directors of the large companies. Jason Kenny just became a board member of ATCO elect of ATCO.

Markham: 26:29

So yeah. For our American, listeners that the former Alberta premier, Jason Kenny, 2019 to, 2022. And there's a lot of context around there that we won't get into, on this podcast, but I do have one question for you, Colin. How what, what is the cost of, producing a megawatt hour of electricity from your project?

Colin: 26:58

Woah. That is a good question. Yeah. A megawatt hour of electricity. So, unfortunately, I am not sharp, after the long weekend about what that answer would be, but I can give you some of the high level numbers.

Colin: 27:13

So annually, the project is estimated or planned to produce 10 gigawatt hours of electricity over its, an annual basis. And the capital expenditure for this 5 megawatt AC project is, we're looking at $11,000,000 in capital expenditure. Yeah. So I'll have to get back to you on that specific question, but I would let me yeah. I don't have it up here.

Colin: 27:44

But

Markham: 27:45

Yeah. The reason the reason I asked the question Yeah. Is because there's a big debate in Alberta about, wind and solar right now. And it's the old you know, the wind doesn't always blow and the sun doesn't always shine. And we've we've addressed this issue in other podcasts where the solution to that is to reengineer your grid so you do things like you have demand response and you have you can trade with other, you know, neighboring jurisdictions.

Markham: 28:13

So when you don't when your wind isn't blowing, you know, the BC Hydro is is generating electricity, and they sell some electricity too. So that's not a fatal or or that's not a conclusive argument by any by any stretch, but I but I am curious, about the extent to, you know, what it costs in Alberta to to build the the capacity to gen the the cost of a megawatt hour of generation. Because if you look at levelized cost of of energy calculations, solar at the bottom end of that is now down to, what, $20. You know? I mean, you can you can buy electricity on the market for 1 or 2¢ per kilowatt hour, you know, if you're buying it out of California or whatever.

Markham: 29:00

And and I was cur but it but it is an it is a bar. You know? At the upper end of that, it might be 50, $60. And I've just wondered in Alberta where on the on that bar of 20, say, to $50, per megawatt hour, your project's set. And we don't have the number,

Colin: 29:20

but if we No. I don't have the number, specifically, but, I would say we are on the higher end of that. We are not don't have the economies of scale of a 400 megawatt or a 500 megawatt project. We're also located in northerly latitudes, so we our production, is lower than it would be in Southern Alberta. So we yeah.

Colin: 29:42

We're not knocking it out of the park when it comes to the levelized cost of energy, but, it's still within a sweet spot where we it's going to be, profitable for the cooperative. And yeah, but we're definitely on the higher end of that due to our lower economies of scale. That's where anything less than 5 megawatts, I think we'd be way out of that, range of, return on investment and low on that bar of levelized cost of energy. But yeah. And we're, yeah, we're looking at ways to increase that efficiency.

Colin: 30:14

And then we're also looking in the future at the battery storage, but it's a new frontier that we are not including in this phase of the project, but we are essentially engineering it in a way and having a a pad, that could receive battery storage in the future. Because, yeah, there solar and wind are not a magic bullet. We we in many ways need the diversified. This is where the distributed and diversified and a big thing that a lot never or never hasn't get talked about in this renewables moratorium or any of these conversations is conservation of energy. You know, we hit our peak, you know, peak demand on that one cold snap where the emergency alert went out, and you saw that drastic drop in in the load on the system.

Colin: 31:01

But there are so many opportunities for, conservation education, conservation of large yeah. Anyway, this just it's piece of the discussion that needs to be included because we can't just we can't keep on just increasing

Markham: 31:16

the Right. It's not all about produce. As Yeah. As we electrify the economy, as we need a lot more electricity, it's not just about all about doubling or tripling our generation capacity. It's also making our our vehicles, our buildings, our industrial processes more efficient so that we do more with less.

Markham: 31:36

And that's one of the beauty beauties of electric technologies. You know, like the heat pump I put in my house, I put for every unit of energy that I put in, I get 3 to 4 units back. That's incredibly efficient. And the same with electric motors and electric in an in an EV. You know, it's like 90, 95 percent efficient compared to an internal combustion engine at 20 to 30.

Markham: 32:00

So, yeah, you know, that's a that's a very good point. I and now another question, about microgrids. Mhmm. Has has this come up in your conversation with your community members where they say, you know what? We're a town of Dawson Creek.

Markham: 32:18

I don't know what you're 3 1,000, 5,000 people, somewhere in that range. And we probably could handle, you know, a 5 megawatt, 10 megawatt farm all by ourselves. Maybe we'll just set up a a microgrid with, VPP and some storage, and we'll make this thing work, you know, just by we don't have to connect to the grid to sell to sell that electricity. I'm just wondering if that conversation ever came up.

Colin: 32:44

It definitely has come up. There's a lot of interest and, you know, dreaming about those, future, potentials. But, again, those gatekeepers, and just yeah. There's so many issues in today's, world that, you know, if we were more organized and, you know, had more resources, I think that those are, you know, future visions. But, yeah, those are complicated, multi stakeholder, feats of engineering that, I think that's where the energy efficiency Alberta and the municipal, climate change action center was really heading in that direction, getting, that funded towns to get their own energy efficiency auditors and, led to a lot of good positive change.

Colin: 33:33

But, with the the seesaw of political swings and ideology, you know, we could be a lot further down that road. The moratorium on renewables is essentially like the exact opposite of heading in that direction. And, yeah, I think it's really protecting big business and big investors, and we were lucky that we're nimble and, yeah, had a good have a good project team behind us that were able to ride out the moratorium. But it tripped a lot of things up, and I think, in my opinion, that was its goal.

Markham: 34:09

Well, I find it fascinating that you're in a northern climate, so your resource is not as your solar resource is not as good as it is in southern Alberta. You're a small scale, so therefore, as you mentioned, economies of scale, reduce your efficiency, and you're still profitable.

Colin: 34:27

Mhmm.

Markham: 34:27

And and I think that speaks to the, you know, why do because I get asked this all the time. Well, why do we need wind and solar? Because it's really cheap.

Colin: 34:37

Yeah.

Markham: 34:38

It's really cheap. That's that is the bottom line because, you know, we can get into, well, it doesn't have any emissions associated with it, but, you know, then you get into climate change arguments, and it just gets cloudy. But but everybody gets the pocketbook argument. Right? If I can produce a megawatt hour of electricity cheaper than coal or gas, then that's where that's the way we're gonna go.

Markham: 35:04

And and I'm I'm impressed that you can be on even if you're on the higher end of the scale, you can still be profitable and and still make money for the for the investors.

Colin: 35:14

And, we're, yeah, we're learning as we go. So I think that's provided a lot of savings because we're doing things on a shoestring so far. But, we're also there's also other expenses that are making us less efficient, but that's where the template comes in. We're putting in a lot of, you know, learning, and navigation of this, also navigating the moratorium, but, it'll, you know, inevitably well, also, prices of equipment continue to come down, and we're going to continue to reduce our costs in navigating regulatory and engineering processes. Yeah.

Colin: 35:48

And like you say, you can't argue with the pocketbook. And this is where microgrids make sense and time of use, billing at the at the meter and all these things. Like, there's so many options and ways that we could be doing things, you know, more efficiently and, cheaper, and diversified. Like, you know, we still need to have backup and nighttime power and winter, you know, for cold temperatures and all those sort of things. But, the answer isn't just one big power plant.

Colin: 36:19

If, you know, there's diverse there's strength in diversity. And so that we're just hoping to play a role, and we're just at the very early stages of that.

Markham: 36:27

Yeah. That's a a my listeners are getting really tired of me dragging out my interview with Gerhard Schlage, who's the chief technical officer, technology officer for Hitachi Energy, but he's a grid expert. And one of the things he said was, look, when you move to wind and solar, you have to do things differently with your grid. Right? You have to reengineer it, and you have to bring all of these fancy technologies that, you know, digital controls and power electronics, stuff I don't even, you know, I know the words, don't know what that you know, I don't know how that operates, but that's what he said.

Markham: 36:58

And and one of the things that is true in BC and also true in Alberta, which has a completely different system, is the gatekeepers impede that change. They impede the reengineering. So all of this potential, you say, we could be more efficient. We could do more at a lower cost. We could be we could this could be a better system, and this is what Schlage says.

Markham: 37:22

He says it's a reengineered grid that has renewables on it is more flexible. It's more resilient. It's more. It can be exactly what we want, but you have to do the work on the grid. It doesn't come free.

Markham: 37:35

It's wind and solar are not a drop in replacement for coal and gas. That is just a fact, and Alberta has treated it like that. And it's which is not a anyway, Colin, this has been a fascinating conversation. I think communities, wind and solar, deserves a lot more attention, and I was very pleased to see that, when I found out about your project, and we'll we'll keep up with it. We'll check-in with you in 6 months, or maybe I'll even come up to Dawson Creek, and we'll do some video interviews.

Markham: 38:07

But good luck with this, man. I I hope this works out really well for the community.

Colin: 38:11

Yeah. Thank you very much for having me and the Peace River Peace Energy Cooperative. Yeah. Just put put it out to your member or to your listeners. Anybody be can become a member of the cooperative, and that gives you an opportunity to invest.

Colin: 38:24

We're planning on launching our investment share offering in, June, late June around the summer solstice to celebrate summer. And, Yeah. So thanks for having us, and we'll keep you posted on our progress.