[Music]
my name is Charlie lewe I’m an
electrical engineer with Hedgehog
Technologies for the solar North project
I’m a site coordinator and part of the
design
team the goals of the project is to
reduce diesel usage on the mainland
North America we’re part of the giant
North American electrical grid but out
here it’s a diesel operated grid we’re
one of the highest consumers of diesel
fuel in Canada we’re burning 10 million
lers a
year the hog solar project is a 2
megawatt solar project it’s going to be
one of the biggest solar projects in BC
off grid the 2 megawatt solar is going
to displace about 600,000 L of diesel
annually and 9% of the electricity on
the grid for us to get off diesel is a
big
[Music]
step on huay pretty gorgeous pristine
place and finding a location for a solar
farm was a bit difficult we know we
didn’t really want to disrupt any parts
of the community so we were lucky enough
to working with the village Masset and
the uh communi here on island to come to
agreement to use the airport so the
airport is already cleared that allowed
us to sort of plan and build out here
and not disturb kind of the natural
landscape around the community worked
out really
well from the gecko every move we make
in this project is aimed around being
Community oriented we’ve hired 11 locals
on site here to help construct what we
see behind us we’re training people on
how to build a farm how to run a farm
the idea is that they would know the ins
and outs of the farm and some of them
would move on to an operational crew and
Haida themselves will be running the
farm and maintaining and operating
it when we speak about renewable energy
we’re not just talking about uh lights
on lights off we’re talking about food
sovereignty as well um that’s energy and
um we pay a lot of money for our food to
get here for us to um have all this
Excess power and stuff we could be doing
green houses we can be solving our our
food sovereignty issues and uh maybe
even start
exporting we see Heder is going to be
put in a battery there as well so all
the electricity that is produced by the
solar farm the community will actually
get paid for it so it’s a big injection
of cash into the community as well for
future
projects the world’s watching this
project and I think a lot of communities
are hoping to get a template for other
other groups and other projects here on
island and other projects kind of across
BC and
Canada it’s been a project that has been
really empowering for me as a project
manager and really fulfilling for me as
an electrical
engineer this is a huge boost in the
community to see a project like this
finally come to fruition it’s amazing I
[Music]
think
