Natural Forces Solar website
Solar panels installed at Pictou Landing First Nation are among the projects by Natural Forces Solar, which has proposed projects for Colchester County.
Natural Forces Solar website
Solar panels installed at Pictou Landing First Nation are among the projects by Natural Forces Solar, which has proposed projects for Colchester County.
Colchester Council moved to write a letter of support for Natural Forces Solar (NFS) which pitched three different solar farm developments.
Those farms are the Glenholme Solar Project, the Lower Harmony Solar Project (in Greenfield), and the Newton Mills Solar Project.
The combined capacity of all projects would be up to 16 megawatts. For reference, one megawatt refers to one million watts of electricity produced by a power plant that is suitable for delivery to the electrical grid. This would be enough electricity to power a potential 2,600 homes.
NFS hopes to begin construction on the Newton Mills and Lower Harmony Solar Projects in late 2026-27, the Glenholme Solar Project by 2027.
“The intention, of course, is that local businesses and/or households would receive bill savings from this project,” said project development manager Mitchell van Oosten.
“It’s maybe — for this question in particular — important to stress that this system is connected to distribution lines. Those are the relatively low-voltage lines. That means that the electricity, by design of the electrical system, has to be consumed local to the project.”
On the lifespan of the solar farms, van Oosten claimed they have a 15-year product warranty and a 30-year power-output guarantee.
“So after 30 years, the panels will still be producing 87 per cent of their initial rated capacity. The most likely scenario is that actually we would just leave them and allow them to carry on producing electricity at that stage, unless, of course, in the next 30 years there’s some extraordinary breakthrough in technology and it makes sense to replace them at that point,” he said.
When they reach the end of their natural lives, the panels will be recycled as best as possible with the future technology available, van Oosen claimed. He then pointed out that the panels are made up mostly of glass and aluminium, which are easy to recycle.
Regarding maintenance, van Oosten said that they would make two to six trips a year to make sure everything is running smoothly. They would also need to manage vegetation.
“Of course, we need to keep the grass down. One option may be to hire a local grass-cutting company, but our preferred option is to get a shepherd with some sheep to come out and keep the grass down that way,” he said.
Some of their previous builds include the solar panels at the North Shore Recreation Centre in Tatamagouche, the solar panels at the West Colchester United Arena in Debert, and the 20-acre solar farm for Oxford Frozen Foods, one of the biggest projects in Nova Scotia according to van Oosten.
During Q&A District 5 Coun. Tim Johnson asked how the land would be acquired, to which van Oosten replied it would be leased from the landowners, something he said they’d never had a problem with before.
“That process looks like finding a viable property online and working out who owns it and going to the front door and asking them if they’d like to lease their land. I’ve done that myself in all cases. We offer a rate that we think is significantly above what somebody would earn from, for example, an agricultural lease. Often they might see their property value returned to them in, say, under five years, something like that,” he said.
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