Study urges Canada to build solar power mega-projects

The advice comes from a new paper published in the journal solar compass The report looks at the current state of solar power generation and compares the benefits of large-scale projects versus smaller, decentralized projects, such as individual homes and commercial buildings installing their own solar panels.

“As a renewable energy source, solar energy has significant advantages over wind, geothermal and nuclear energy,” said Anil Hira, director of the Clean Energy Research Group (CERG) and SFU political science professor. “The cost of installing solar panels has dropped significantly over the past decade, by an estimated 90 per cent, and is an important part of many countries’ energy plans, but in Canada this potential has remained largely untouched. While solar power accounts for approximately 4% of global electricity generation and only 0.5% in Canada, so we are less dependent on hydropower and reduce the intermittency issues of wind energy.

The paper argues that this is because most policies around solar energy focus on small-scale, decentralized residential and commercial generation. For policymakers, these tend to be easy political wins because it rewards individuals and companies for investing in the technology for their own benefit and reduces land-use issues because the panels are mostly installed on existing buildings.

However, the authors argue that this approach fails to generate enough power to enable the green transition, fragments the power system and raises equity issues, as not every region is suitable for solar power, and wealthy homeowners and large companies may be the only ones. Be willing to make a long-term investment in panels and batteries. To put it more simply, on average, utility-scale solar costs about 64% less than residential solar installations and 50% less than commercial solar installations.

Utility-scale projects come with their own challenges, including huge start-up costs, public and political opposition and the space required for large areas of solar panels, but the report found that many land-use issues are often overstated and innovative solutions exist The scheme has space to support a variety of uses for the land where the solar panels will be installed. They believe the benefits far outweigh the challenges, including. In fact, the amount of land required for solar energy to make a significant contribution to our electricity mix is ​​far smaller than one might think. The authors recommend using public lands for large farms to reduce the NIMBY effect.

The study cites some examples of solar projects around the world, including in the United States

California’s Solar Star project has 1.7 million panels spread over 13 kilometers and can provide enough power (579 megawatts) to power 255,000 homes. The Mesquite Solar 1 power project in Arizona provides 150 megawatts of power. It was built in 2013 at a cost of $600 million, mostly from a $337 million loan from the U.S. Department of Energy.

Harnessing the potential of the transition to clean energy will require proactive policy and financial support from high-level governments, the report concludes.

“While different scales of deployment have their own role to play, from a capital efficiency perspective, policies that favor rapid deployment of utility-scale projects in optimal sun locations should be prioritized,” said Prasanna Krishnan, co-author of CERG. “All factors Taken together, national policies are needed to help ease barriers to the development of large-scale solar and storage farms, including much-needed interconnection reforms that will have a transformative impact on our electricity system.”