The Awasis Solar Facility, Saskatchewan’s newest Indigenous-owned solar facility is now online and providing up to 10 megawatts of clean energy to the provincial grid.

Awasis Solar is a partnership between Cowessess First Nation and Elemental Energy. Together, they built, own and manage the facility, and will sell the power generated to SaskPower as part of a 20-year Power Purchase Agreement.

“SaskPower is transforming the way it powers the province, and projects like Awasis will be essential to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions,” said Don Morgan, Minister Responsible for SaskPower. “We are pleased to welcome the facility to our grid, and look forward to continuing our relationship with Cowessess First Nation.”

“With more than 1,000 MW of new wind and solar projects expected to come online by 2027, this project is an exciting sign of things to come,” said Rupen Pandya, SaskPower President & CEO. “SaskPower is well on track to reduce its emissions to 50 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030, and adding non-emitting sources like wind and solar is an important part of our plans. We look forward to continued collaboration with First Nations and industry as we work to achieve our targets.”

The Awasis solar project, along with the Pesâkâstêw solar project was selected by First Nations Power Authority (FNPA) as part of the First Nations Opportunity Agreement in 2019. The agreement is estimated to be worth $40 million over the course of 20 years. The project was funded in part by the Government of Canada.

“Cowessess has been working in the renewable energy space since 2013 and our Nation is pleased to announce that after three years of development the Awasis Solar project is now online generating power,” said Cowessess First Nation Chief Cadmus Delorme. “Our Nation is building our renewable portfolio and this project has provided us many lessons learned that we will carry forward to future projects.  We are grateful to our business partners Elemental for helping us get to this monumental day.”

This project increases the amount of solar capacity on our grid to a total of 81 MW, including customer-generated solar capacity.

For more information, please visit saskpower.com/systemmap.

At a glance...

• The Awasis Solar facility is now operational near Regina
• The First Nations-owned facility produces enough power for 2,500 homes on average
• SaskPower is on track to reduce carbon emissions at least 50 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030
• For more information, please visit saskpower.com/systemmap