Mayor Linnise Clark and Ryan Cramer, president, Big Marble Farms, give each other a 'high-five' during a ribbon cutting ceremony to mark a new collaboration that will allow excess electricity generated on-site at the greenhouse to be sold back to the city power grid.--NEWS PHOTOS BRENDAN MILLER
bmiller@medicinehatnews.com
The City of Medicine Hat will now purchase extra electricity generated by Big Marble Farms’ eight on-site cogeneration generators following a lengthy process to allow the greenhouse to export excess power.
A ribbon-cutting ceremony was held Wednesday afternoon to officially mark the new connection to the city’s power grid following years of discussions and several regulatory hurdles.
The interconnection will allow the largest greenhouse in the province to sell any excess electricity it is able to generate from its 12-megawatt CO on-site generation system during off-peak production hours.
Mayor Linnsie Clark says the partnership is a step forward to strengthening the city’s local energy resilience.
“I’m really glad we got to this point today to have Big Marble make such a significant investment in energy production on their property,” said Clark. “To be able to work together so that when they need energy, we can provide it, and when they excess, we can distribute it to our customers.”
Starting in 2016 Big Marble Farms began to expand to fill a growing demand for fresh produce in the province, before outgrowing available power from the city’s grid.
Four years later in 2020, during an expansion of the site, Big Marble Farms added a 6MW CO generation system and began generating its own power.
“We knew that we needed to be able to grow more of these local items 365 days of the year with the grow lights, this was crucial in our industry to be able to grow 365, so we started looking at further expansions,” said BMF president Ryan Cramer. “We probably could have waited or found a different piece of land somewhere else and expanded if we could have found power in a different jurisdiction, but it was important that we expanded here because of efficiency and economy.”
These highly efficient generators are able to capture waste heat and redistribute it back into the greenhouse to meet thermal heating needs for plants.
The system runs off natural gas and achieves higher efficiency and lower costs by using a large engine, BMF doubled its generation to 12MW, however the large on-site generators were not being utilized to full potential as the greenhouse had to shut the system off overnight.
“These generators run more efficiently when they’re running for long periods of time, and it’s very hard on the equipment that’s starting and stopping,” explained BMF director Anna De Paoli. “But we were only able to run when we needed it because we weren’t able to export to the grid.”
That’s because, at the time, regulations prevented the greenhouse from exporting excess power.
Things changed in 2024 when the province introduced legislative changes to the Electricity Statutes – Modernizing Alberta’s Electricity Grid Act, enabling self support and electricity export.
BMF staff have since been working closely with city counterparts to create new bylaws and build the connection required that would enable interconnection and allow the greenhouse generators to run full time.
“This has been a very, very, very long process,” said Clark. “Big Marble has been working on this for almost a decade and it is a huge reason to celebrate. We were finally able to make this happen in a co-ordinated way and hopefully it’s good for both parties. We’re working together and sharing energy.”
De Paoli says its main greenhouse is the city’s largest utility customer, and during peak loads the 55-acre facility can pull 28MW from the grid.
The greenhouse uses much more electricity in winter to keep lights running; however summer requires far less energy.
“We can actually access their utility and then when we don’t need our power, when we’re not running our lights, we can export to the city the remainder, so that’s what we’re celebrating here today,” said De Paoli.
