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Saskatchewan’s newest Indigenous-owned solar facility is officially up and running.
The 10-megawatt Awasis Solar Facility, which is owned by the Cowessess First Nation and Elemental Energy, was unveiled Wednesday near Regina.
The Cowessess First Nation and Elemental Energy built, own and manage the facility, and will sell the power generated to SaskPower as part of a 20-year power purchase agreement.
“SaskPower is transforming the way it powers the province, and projects like Awasis will be essential to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions,” Don Morgan, the minister responsible for SaskPower, said in a media release. “We are pleased to welcome the facility to our grid, and look forward to continuing our relationship with Cowessess First Nation.”
The release said the facility will produce enough power for 2,500 homes on average. The provincial grid now has a total of 81 MW of solar capacity.
“With more than 1,000 MW of new wind and solar projects expected to come online by 2027, this project is an exciting sign of things to come,” SaskPower president and CEO Rupen Pandya said in the release.
“SaskPower is well on track to reduce its emissions to 50 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030, and adding non-emitting sources like wind and solar is an important part of our plans. We look forward to continued collaboration with First Nations and industry as we work to achieve our targets.”
The Awasis project was funded in part by the Government of Canada.
“Cowessess has been working in the renewable energy space since 2013 and our Nation is pleased to announce that after three years of development, the Awasis Solar project is now online generating power,” Chief Cadmus Delorme said in the release.
“Our Nation is building our renewable portfolio and this project has provided us many lessons learned that we will carry forward to future projects. We are grateful to our business partners Elemental for helping us get to this monumental day.”
The Awasis and Pesâkâstêw solar projects were selected by the First Nations Power Authority as part of the First Nations Opportunity Agreement in 2019. The agreement is expected to be worth $40 million over the course of 20 years.