A sea of 4500 solar panels came online on Tuesday as part of the City of Saskatoon’s first solar farm project.

Visible from Circle Drive South, the farm is located on a 14-acre parcel of undeveloped land off of Dundonald Avenue.

 Director of Saskatoon Light and Power Trevor Bell says the project will generate enough electricity to power about 400 homes each year, an area comparable to the size of Willowgrove.

He adds that the farm will not only save the city $300,000 in reduced electricity purchases from SaskPower annually, but it will also reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 23,000 tonnes over the project lifespan. This is the equivalent of removing 160 vehicles from the road every year.

The farm cost a total of $7.3 million, with $2.6 million funded by the federal and provincial governments.  Bell says it will take about 15 years for the City to recoup those expenses, and the lifespan of the project is 25-30 years.  

“At that point, it will be up to the people at that time to decide if they want to replace the panels and keep on generating electricity here or if there is something else (they want to do).

Bell says the project came in nearly $1 million under budget, however it was also expected to come online in December, so construction was about five months behind schedule.  

“Honestly, winter is dark and cold here, so most of the solar gets generated in the summer. It wasn’t a significant issue for us to get finished for spring.”

Although this is the first City solar project, Bell says it definitely won’t be the last. He alluded to a much larger solar project getting underway in the near future.  

“What we want to do is make sure that all these numbers are accurate, that we’re getting the power that we thought we were going to get, and then we’d like to build a much bigger project. We have ideas that we’re just exploring right now.”

Bell adds that the solar panels came from China, “the world leader in solar panels.”