Museum's solar power dream comes to fruition
After years of dreaming, the North Peace Historical Society’s dreams of solar power at the Fort St. John North Peace Museum came true this spring – and they’ve already had a no-pay bill from BC Hydro.
“It was often pitched as a wouldn’t it be nice if we had solar panels dream. It wasn’t until about the time of the pandemic that we began to think more seriously about it,” said museum curator, Heather Sjoblom at the official unveiling of the project last week.
In 2020, during the drafting of the Historical Society’s strategic plan, board member Ken Boon suggested putting the solar panels down as one of their goals. So that became goal 3.4 in the strategic plan – install solar panels with the help of grants, and use the money saved to hire a second staff member, if possible.
Now the first part of that dream has been achieved, the Society is on its way to achieving the second part.
Two years of grant writing and generous help from local businesses led to the arrival and installation of the 64 solar panels on the museum’s roof this May.
Sjoblom said that the first grant she applied for was a Shell Canada Social Investment Program Grant, in February 2022, and in May of that year, she learned that Shell had given them $5,000.
“That got the ball rolling as we needed to get the rest of the funding in order to see the project through,” she said. “We got things moving in other ways too, as other granters are more likely to provide funding once they see that there are funders already on board.”
The ball was indeed rolling. Shortly after Shell’s grant, Pembina gave the museum a $7,500 grant, and by working with Andy Ackerman to apply for more grants, the museum received $5,000 each from Alliance Pipeline and TC Energy/Coastal GasLink.
It’s not often that a business contacts the museum and asks if there are any fundraising projects they can help with, Sjoblom said, so she was surprised when Western Financial Group’s Ashley Holland contacted her in October 2022 with that request. In early 2023, the museum received a $5,000 Western Financial Group Communities Foundation Grant, thanks to Holland’s assistance.
Once the Historical Society contributed $21,000 to the project, they had raised over half the funds needed for the solar panels and were eligible to apply for a BC Capital Gaming Grant, which was approved in December 2023.
While the grant process was going on, the board of the Historical Society was working with Greg Dueck of Peace Energy Cooperative to design the system. Once the grants were approved, Dueck said they finalized the project design, submitted permit applications and ordered the materials.
“It went fairly well, mid-May we completed the installation, and got all powered up to start making power,” he said.
A local company, McFie Electrical, works with Peace Energy on all their solar projects up here, and did the installation on the museum, Dueck said.
The system is called a flush roof-mount array, mounted parallel to and about six inches above the surface of the roof.
“It’s the most reasonable cost because you’ve already got your structure there. So, every time the sun shines, you make power,” Dueck said.
The 64 panels produce about 30kW of DC power, and there is room to expand the system in future if the Society wants. An inverter takes the DC power away from the solar array and turns it into three-phase power which the building uses.
“We’re estimating about 32,000 kWh per year because the Museum uses about that much power every year, if we can displace that in a year, it’s called net zero,” he said. “It reduces your electrical costs in a huge way.”
“This is the kind of project that’s going to keep the costs of operating the museum down for decades to come.”
In the first year, the solar panels should save approximately $4,000 in electricity.
The panels have been producing power for the museum since May 23, and in August the museum received its first power bill with a zero balance, which Sjoblom said was exciting. The museum has also already saved over 6,000kg of CO2 emissions, the equivalent of planting over 180 trees.
“A big part of our argument when writing grants was not only that we’d be leading the way environmentally and saving money as a non-profit organization, but that we’d be channeling the $4,000 or so in electricity savings, along with other funding, into a second staff position,” Sjoblom said.
A second staff position would help the museum better preserve and present the community and region’s history. The museum, in addition to Sjoblom, currently employs a second part-time staff member who catalogues and digitizes the collection in the fall and winter, and a full-time summer student, with help from other grants, in the spring and summer.
“As we save more with these solar panels, then we hope to hire a full-time archivist and programmer. This person would be responsible for every aspect of our archive from cataloguing photographs and documents to responding to archival enquiries,” she said.
“This position would help keep up with incoming archival materials as well as work on the backlog of documents that were donated and catalogued on paper before I started in 2011.”
The position would also enable the museum to increase its educational programs and events, while freeing up more time for Sjoblom to work on exhibits.
“All this work would enable us to better document, preserve and share our local history.”
Historical Society president Bruce Christensen thanked the sponsors – Shell Canada, Pembina, Western Financial Group, Alliance Pipeline, the Province of British Columbia through the Capital Gaming Grant, and Coastal GasLink-TC Energy for their support on the project.
“The museum and the board are always looking for opportunities to enhance what we do, and whenever we can save money, that means we can do more things,” Christensen said.