An Edmonton manufacturer has flipped the switch on a new rooftop solar field, the largest of its kind from any private company in the city.<\/p>\n
All Weather at Home, one of the biggest private window, door and glass companies in the country, is now powering its west-end facilities with more than 2,000 solar panels, producing 1.3 gigawatt hours of energy annually.<\/p>\n
It amounts to 35 percent of the power needed for the 261,000-square-foot facility. On weekends, the surplus flows directly into Alberta\u2019s electricity grid.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday morning, guests at an official launch event for the project heard how that stacks up against others. Among similar Canadian window and door manufacturers, it\u2019s No. 1. Within Edmonton, only Epcor\u2019s solar farm and the city\u2019s rooftop array at the Edmonton Expo Centre are larger.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe feel that this is a good indicator of the investment that we\u2019re willing to make here in Edmonton,\u201d co-CEO Jillene Lakevold said.<\/p>\n
Fellow co-CEO Colin Wiebe said, \u201cIt signals to our customers that we\u2019re in this for the long term.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lakevold said the cost was in the millions of dollars and took around a year to complete. Getting the system up and running in an older building was no small feat, she said.<\/p>\n
Engineering an up-sized upgrade<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not all silicon and glass when it comes to rooftop solar panels. Curtis Craig, president of InfernoSolar, the company that built the field, said it required more than 17,500 concrete ballast blocks to hold everything in place.<\/p>\n
The total build amounted to 755,000 lbs, a weight the structure couldn\u2019t handle. However, the roof, like many others, was flush with several hundred tons of rock and gravel.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey literally vacuumed the gravel off the roof, and it worked,\u201d said Lakevold.<\/p>\n
The next challenge was a gambit of speed. The old electrical panel needed to be replaced, but the company couldn\u2019t shut down operations. The team had just 36 hours over a weekend to make the switch before operations resumed on Monday morning.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were removing the heart of the building and putting it back in,\u201d Craig said.<\/p>\n
Costly energy turns some to solar<\/p>\n
Craig said this was the second-largest project his company has taken on, the first being the Little Potato Company\u2019s sprawling headquarters just south of the city, in Nisku.<\/p>\n
This field follows other big rooftop solar projects, such as those at the Edmonton Convention Centre, Ikea Edmonton, and the SunRise Building.<\/p>\n
Craig pointed to the fact that All Weather at Home did this \u201cwithout handouts,\u201d and of its own volition, and agreed that some private groups are becoming more interested in solar energy. The company did not receive grants, but is using federal and provincial tax credits and rebates.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt takes a little bit of time to become familiar with these things,\u201d Craig said. He added that sometimes it\u2019s challenging to pitch solar as a worthy expense when companies could use funds on more machines, more trucks, and staff.<\/p>\n
However, he said that the message is starting to stick. While solar has been shrinking in price, the cost of energy has been on the rise.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt some point, those two curves cross, and it starts to become a really interesting investment.\u201d<\/p>\n
lnewbigging@postmedia.com<\/a><\/p>\n @liamnewbigging.bsky.social<\/a><\/p>\n x.com\/nubigin<\/a><\/p>\n Bookmark our website and support our journalism: Don\u2019t miss the news you need to know \u2014 add EdmontonJournal.com<\/a> and EdmontonSun.com<\/a> to your bookmarks and sign up for our newsletters here.<\/a><\/p>\n You can also support our journalism by becoming a digital subscriber. Subscribers gain unlimited access to The Edmonton Journal, Edmonton Sun, National Post and 13 other Canadian news sites. Support us by subscribing today: The Edmonton Journal<\/a> | The Edmonton Sun.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An Edmonton manufacturer has flipped the switch on a new rooftop solar field, the largest of its kind…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":744462,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194294],"tags":[49,48,266813,266811,266810,23752,266812,232971,134360,3094,58939,3095],"class_list":["post-744461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-edmonton","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canadian-window-and-door-manufacturers","tag-colin-wiebe","tag-curtis-craig","tag-edmonton","tag-edmonton-convention-centre","tag-edmonton-expo-centre","tag-rooftop-solar","tag-solar-energy","tag-solar-farm","tag-solar-panels"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=744461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744461\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/744462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=744461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=744461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=744461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}