A pilot in Alberta is exploring whether thousands of inactive oil and gas well sites could host small solar installations. The concept aims to address two issues at once: grid decarbonization and the growing inventory of abandoned wells.
Proponents say local solar could stabilize rural grids and avoid costly transmission upgrades. Skeptics question how remote sites would connect to the grid and whether this distracts from the legal obligation to fully reclaim wells.
For details: https://pvbuzz.com/alberta-abandoned-wells-micro-solar/
For those with grid, planning, or renewables experience—what are the biggest technical or economic hurdles you see here?
Source: team_pv
3 Comments
How would one transmit power from these remote solar micro-arrays? How much red tape would be thrown up to prevent their grid interconnections?
The oil and gas industry hates solar and is doing everything possible to obstruct it.
The United Conservative government (UCP) in alberta isn’t just all-in on oil and gas, they are actively hostile to renewables. Zoning laws intentionally designed to hobble solar and wind installations cost the province 30+ billion Canadian dollars in renewable investment.
Until the UCP is out of power there will be no meaningful renewables coming to the alberta grid.
Local solar plus storage could stabilize rural grids. But how would remote drilling sites connect to the grid? This distracts from the legal obligation to fully clean and remediate wells while also likely doing nothing to help with the energy transition. There’s no shortage of good places to build solar, the bottlenecks are interchange and storage.