BVGEC - Member Highlight - Solar Alberta
Solar Alberta | January 29, 2023
We interviewed Andrea Johancsik from Bow Valley Green Energy Cooperative, to learn about the cooperative’s experiences with solar in Alberta:
We interviewed Andrea Johancsik from Bow Valley Green Energy Cooperative, to learn about the cooperative’s experiences with solar in Alberta:
Bow Valley Green Energy Cooperative (BVGEC) operates as a community generation (comm-gen) investment cooperative (co-op), primarily in Canmore and across the Bow Valley. BVGEC’s primary goal is to make renewable energy affordable and accessible to everyone in the Bow Valley region, by providing an investment vehicle to pool human and financial resources. The co-op attributes its success partly to the support of the charity Biosphere Institute of the Bow Valley, whose study, sparked by the question “Why isn’t there more solar in the Bow Valley?”, identified a desire for community-driven renewable projects in the Canmore area.
The co-op is volunteer-run and community-owned, with members from diverse ages and financial backgrounds. The majority of the members currently reside in the Bow Valley and Calgary areas, but BVGEC hopes to gain more members from across Alberta. Each lifetime member invests $100 to join, then has the opportunity to invest further in specific projects. BVGEC offers many avenues for people to get involved through membership, investment, host site, and volunteer opportunities.s.
All the projects BVGEC have embarked on to date have been solar. In fact, BVGEC is proud to be the first comm-gen organization in Alberta to utilize existing infrastructure and the micro-generation model. Operating within the existing system has reduced costs and increased the speed at which these projects are completed. This model gives community members who are not able to install solar on their own homes a way to advance the transition to renewable energy locally, and gives hosts the funding to realize projects they would not have had the capital to undertake.
Their first project, an 11.25kW photovoltaic system on Ralph Conner Memorial United Church, was completed in September 2021. BVGEC currently has many prospective hosts sites for comm-gen solar installations, with a predicted installed capacity of 487kW expected to be complete by mid-2023. One such project is at I-Place (1 Industrial Place) in Canmore. Phase 1 of the project was energized in November 2022 and Phase 2 is slated for completion in 2023. I-Place is a unique project because it is a new build where the co-op collaborated with the developer to install a system that supported the business model and worked with the building design.
BVGEC hopes to provide a “blueprint” for community generation in Alberta with the momentum of many upcoming projects. The cooperative seeks to advance to being a staffed organization, rather than volunteer-run, and to promote community education and projects through a future social benefit fund.If you would like to learn more about Bow Valley Green Energy Cooperative, please visit its website.