All Weather at Home Flips Switch on Massive Solar Field

An Edmonton manufacturer has launched the largest rooftop solar field of any private company in the city. All Weather at Home, one of the country's biggest window, door, and glass companies, now powers its west-end facility with more than 2,000 solar panels.

The installation produces 1.3 gigawatt hours of energy annually, covering 35 per cent of the facility's power needs for its 261,000-square-foot building. On weekends, surplus energy flows directly into Alberta's electricity grid.

The project required more than 17,500 concrete ballast blocks to anchor the panels, totalling 755,000 pounds. The older building's roof couldn't support that weight, but the structure was topped with several hundred tons of rock and gravel that workers literally vacuumed off to make room. "They literally vacuumed the gravel off the roof, and it worked," said co-CEO Jillene Lakevold.

The most critical challenge came during the changeover. The company's old electrical panel needed replacement, but operations couldn't stop. The team had just 36 hours over a weekend to make the switch before Monday morning resumed normal operations. "We were removing the heart of the building and putting it back in," said Curtis Craig, president of InfernoSolar, the company that built the field.

Among similar Canadian window and door manufacturers, it ranks No. 1. Within Edmonton, only Epcor's solar farm and the city's rooftop array at the Edmonton Expo Centre are larger.

The project cost millions and took around a year to complete. The company did not receive grants but is using federal and provincial tax credits and rebates. "It takes a little bit of time to become familiar with these things," Craig said. He noted that as solar costs have fallen and energy costs have risen, the economics are starting to shift. "At some point, those two curves cross, and it starts to become a really interesting investment."