A new idea is being explored in Southern Alberta.

RenuWell is a company that wants to put up solar arrays on orphan well sites.

Keith Hirsche says they've started dealing with the MD of Taber, but it could work anywhere.

"Everybody's dealing with this issue of abandoned oil and gas infrastructure and also the loss of tax revenue, so we've gotten a strong interest from other municipalities in the area and part of our pilot funding is actually in place to make sure we can share the information with other municipalities so they can see how it's going and decide if it's going to be useful for them," he says

Hirsche says from the oil and gas side the same reclamation and mediation steps have to be taken, the well has to be abandoned, the groundwater has to be protected, it has to sealed, all the top soil has to be put back and new vegetation has to be put back and it has to be monitored to make sure there's no contamination.

"The only difference for us from that side is that once the vegetation is established, normally you'd have to wait a few years before you get a reclamation certificate while you're monitoring the vegetation to make sure everything has come back properly. From our side, we're able to take the site earlier and then monitor the vegetation while the solar project is going.

He says normally the oil company or Orphan Well Association has to take out the road to the site and take out the power link but now they don't have to because the solar project can still use them, saving the oil company money.

"From the solar side it's nothing magic again, it's just using the two acre site from the oil and gas lease to put in a small ground-mount solar array and there's nothing different about that than if you were to just choose another piece of ground, with the exception we don't have to put in a road and don't have to put in a power line because that facility already exists," Hirsche says.

He says in Alberta there's a micro-generation system for solar, a process where if you're putting solar on your house and if it's the same annual energy as what you use on the house, or on irrigation, there's a very streamlined process to get that connected to the grid.

However if you use the same system but it's just putting power into the grid and it's bigger than the home or irrigation system, you have a different process to go through with the utilities and that process is much more detailed and that's the process ReNuWell uses.

Hirsche hopes to begin building in May of 2021.

 

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