How Canada's largest solar farm is changing Alberta's landscape

Our planet is changing. So is our journalism. This story is part of a CBC News initiative entitled Our Changing Planet to show and explain the effects of climate change and what is being done about it.

What's most stunning about the Travers Solar Project is its size.   

Imagine a seemingly endless prairie wheat or canola field. Except this land is filled with steel piles: 228,000 of them, when the last one is finally driven into the ground.

A kilometre or so down a service road in Lomond, Alta., in Vulcan County, the next phase of construction is taking shape: row upon row of black solar panels, already tilting at the sun.

Dan Balaban is the CEO of Greengate Power, the company developing the massive project. He's overwhelmed by the progress, saying that standing among the panels is a very different experience than seeing it in a virtual reality model.

He's emotional, he says, to "actually see an idea that we conceived almost five years ago now turn into reality."

When complete, the nearly 3,300 acres of land will be covered in 1.3 million solar panels, each one of them 1.2 by 1.8 metres in size. A member of the Greengate Power team crunches the numbers on his smartphone and estimates the finalized project will be roughly equivalent to 1,600 Canadian Football League fields.

The project will produce enough electricity to power 150,000 homes, provide much-needed jobs and investment in the area, and exploit Alberta's renewable resources — a timely endeavour given the increased demand for green energy, and a global priority as world leaders gather in Glasgow for the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26).

The Conference of Parties (COP), as it's known, meets every year and is the global decision-making body set up to implement the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, adopted in the early 1990s, and subsequent climate agreements.

"We need to move beyond talking about solutions. And I'm really proud that our company is helping create real, clean electrons. We need more projects like this," Balaban said.

The Travers Solar Project is the largest solar farm to date in Canada. It is no small part in why Alberta is leading renewable energy growth in the country. This one project essentially doubles the province's solar capacity. 

That achievement hasn't come cheap. Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, one of the world's largest renewable energy investment firms, has put up the entire cost of $700 million to make the project a reality — its first funding in the Canadian market. 

Online sales giant Amazon was ready and waiting to buy all the electricity the solar farm can harvest in its effort to reduce its company emissions (although it has not yet revealed which facility it will be powering). For the record, that's 465 megawatts of alternating currents (mwAC) or 691 megawatts of direct currents (mwDC) — the equivalent of enough electricity to power 150,000 homes. 

"For this to be done in Alberta, the heart of oil country, I think this is really fantastic," said Balaban, who has been developing renewable energy projects for 15 years.