Microsoft agrees to purchase wind power from Alberta project

Microsoft will buy 543 GWh worth of energy a year from an Alberta wind power project in a deal announced Monday.

The energy produced will be from the Paintearth Wind Project about 40 kilometres east of Stettler, which began construction in September. It is expected to be finished by the end of 2023. The power-purchase agreement will run for 15 years.

The project is 75 per cent owned by Potentia Renewables Inc. of Toronto and 25 per cent by Greengate Power Corp. of Calgary.

Dan Balaban, CEO of Greengate, called renewables the new Alberta Advantage because of companies looking to tap into the province’s vast renewable supply.

“These sorts of deals really change the narrative on Alberta,” he told Postmedia. “Alberta is not just an oil and gas province. Alberta is truly an energy province. We can be leaders in renewable energy and it leads directly to new economic development opportunities.”

Chris Barry, president of Microsoft Canada, said the deal will help meet the company’s goal of contracting 100 per cent of its energy consumption with renewable sources by 2025.

“This agreement with Paintearth Wind is an important step in helping Microsoft deliver on our renewable energy commitments in Canada,” he said in a news release.

PWP is a 198 MW project and consists of 38 turbines. Construction this fall was to be limited to setting up the area, building new road access and improving existing roads and commencing construction at the Lanes Lake Substation. The bulk of the construction of the project is expected to take place throughout 2023 and has an expected life span of more than 30 years.

Balaban noted the technology on wind projects is improving and becoming more efficient. He pointed to their first project in the region, the Halkirk Wind Project near Castor, which uses 83 turbines but produces three-quarters of the expected capacity of this project.

Balaban said there are billions of dollars in the pipeline for new renewable energy projects.

One that has recently come online is Greengate’s $700-million Travers Solar project in Vulcan County, funded by Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners. While not scheduled to be fully complete until the end of this year, it is already putting energy into the Alberta grid. That project has an agreement from 2021 to sell 400 MW of power to Amazon.

“Alberta is unique in Canada because it’s the only deregulated power market in the country, which means it’s the only power market in the country where companies can contract directly with project owners for renewable energy,” said Balaban. “That’s created a massive, massive interest in these sorts of arrangements in this province.”

Twitter: @JoshAldrich03

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