Community Solar Power Generation

  Status: Needs Improving

Solar photovoltaic (PV) panels generate energy directly from sunlight. Producing energy this way reduces pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and reliance on fossil fuels.

The City's Low Emissions Community Plan includes a target to increase community solar generation capacity to 50 MW by 2030, and to 250 MW by 2050 (includes both residential and commercial applications).

The City's 2022-2025 Strategic Plan includes the following key action within the Environmental Sustainability priority area:

• Develop initiatives to increase the use of renewable energy or low emissions energy sources and promote opportunities for property owners to generate their own electricity from renewable sources.

Where are we now?

Households, businesses, and co-operatives in Saskatoon are moving quickly to install solar panels. Solar generation capacity in our city was over 20 times higher in 2024 than in 2014. The graph below shows total generation capacity (in both the Saskatoon Light & Power and SaskPower service areas of the city).  Installed solar generation capacity was approximately 6,500 kilowatts at the end of 2024, which is enough to power over 900 homes for a year! However, this total only represents 13% of the LEC Plan's community target to install 50 MW of solar capacity by 2030.