The City of St. Albert is looking to gather public input about its proposed solar farm project with an online survey open until May 15.
Regan Lefebvre, St. Albert’s senior manager of utilities, said the City hopes to gauge interest in the project, and better understand concerns.
“The more input the better,” Lefebvre said.
In February, council voted to have City administration proceed with a detailed design of a hybrid commercial and municipal own-use generation (MOUG) solar farm. This energy generator — located on the City-owned Badger Lands, a parcel off Villeneuve Road in northwest St. Albert — would supply power to the commercial grid and help offset consumption at the City’s own facilities. Council will see the results of the design in an upcoming meeting July 13.
While detailed design centres around the hybrid project, council will hear other solar farm options, including a strictly commercial solar farm, or purely MOUG version. Additionally, City administration will come forward with a suite of other options for the land that don’t include a solar farm: commercial, residential, and industrial development.
Council will also be presented with a remediation study outlining what it would cost to decontaminate the Badger Lands, which were formerly used as a snow dump. The study was spurred by a council motion from August 2021, and funded with $35,000 from the City’s capital reserve.
During the same August meeting, council directed administration to undertake public engagement “inclusive of the broader community within St. Albert,” for an approved $30,000 from the City’s stabilization reserve.
Lefebvre said the City’s plan for engagement is still developing and will likely include additional opportunities.
Update on project design to come
Additionally, Lefebvre said the public will likely receive an update about how the project’s design is coming along within the next few weeks. The update will include some of the hybrid solar farm’s design, which is currently 60-per-cent complete, as well as the updated economic analysis.
“We’re hoping to share that with the public soon,” Lefebvre said.
He added that he has been “very pleased” with the feedback the City has been getting since the survey opened on April 11.
“I am looking at some of the questions and concerns,” Lefebvre said. “There’s actually been some really good feedback … some things that we’ve thought of, some we didn’t fully think through — maybe we were thinking we would leave those until later, but they’re good questions to be asking right now.”
Those interested in filling out the survey can go to the City’s survey portal at: https://conversation.stalbert.ca/solar
