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Canadian Saskatchewan pushes new scheme for renewable energy development

Canadian Saskatchewan pushes new scheme for renewable energy development SaskPower Headquarter, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada (source: flickr/ daryl_mitchell, creative commons)
Alexander Richter 8 Oct 2018

The province of Saskatchewan in Canada is introducing a new scheme under which it would be easier to sell power of renewable energy projects to the provincial utility SaskPower. It is though unclear if this would help potential geothermal development.

The Government of the Canadian province of Saskatchewan has announced plans for an easier way of selling power to the provincial power company SaskPower.

Under the Power Generation Partner Program (PGPP) — which, according to Regina Leader Post, is to replace the Small Power Producers program and the Flare Gas Power Generation program — is a two-year plan, with an option to extend it to three and allows customers to develop “power generation projects” to sell electricity to SaskPower.

The government expects between 70 to 105 MW of power generation capacity to be added under the new scheme.

There is an expectation for greater “uptake” under the plan which will increase the amount of power to be purchased by the Crown (the government).

Under the PGPP program, up to 10 MW of renewable energy power generation capacity will be accepted and 25 MW of carbon-neutral non-renewable generation. Applications will be accepted on an annual basis. This year’s application window runs from Nov. 15 to 30.

The provincial utility of SaskPower will be the buyer for the electricity under the scheme.

How far this effects planned geothermal development in Saskatchewan, that we have reported on before, is so far unclear. General industry feedback, particularly on the geothermal side can be described as carefully critical. For the big push on renewables the overall scheme seems to set too little of a target in regards to installed MWs in capacity.

Source: LeaderPost