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SaskEnergy is switching to solar at several of its town border stations.
According to the Crown energy company, the Regina station was converted this week, and several other town border stations will be following suit over the next seven years as part of the company’s emission reduction plan.
Town border stations reduce the pressure of natural gas before it is distributed locally to homes and businesses.
At the Regina station, the switch involved installing 176 solar panels that will capture enough energy to power the station during the day and add any excess power to the provincial grid. At night, SaskEnergy said the station will still use power from the grid through an agreement with SaskPower.
“Over the course of a year, we expect that the station’s net electrical usage from the province’s power grid will balance out to zero,” Mark Guillet, acting CEO of SaskEnergy, said in a statement.
Don Morgan, minister responsible for SaskEnergy, said the switch is “a major step” in the company’s goal of reducing emissions by 35 per cent by 2030.
“SaskEnergy is also focused on reducing the amount of vented natural gas, optimizing its operating practices, and improving the efficiency of its compressors and other infrastructure,” Morgan added in a statement.
The switch to solar isn’t the only way the Crown corporation is trying to reduce emissions. According to SaskEnergy, it is also exploring new technologies that could capture more of the vented gas from its operations.
“One such project — implementing new technology that captures vented natural gas from SaskEnergy’s transmission compressors, redirecting it into the engine air intake for use as a supplemental fuel — won a national environmental stewardship award last year from the Canadian Gas Association,” SaskEnergy noted in a statement.