How Canada's largest solar farm is changing Alberta's landscape

Project the size of 1,600 football fields is making Alberta a leader in green energy

What's most stunning about the Travers Solar Project is its size.   

Imagine a seemingly endless prairie wheat or canola field. Except this land is filled with steel piles: 228,000 of them, when the last one is finally driven into the ground.

A kilometre or so down a service road in Lomond, Alta., in Vulcan County, the next phase of construction is taking shape: row upon row of black solar panels, already tilting at the sun.

Dan Balaban is the CEO of Greengate Power, the company developing the massive project. He's overwhelmed by the progress, saying that standing among the panels is a very different experience than seeing it in a virtual reality model.

He's emotional, he says, to "actually see an idea that we conceived almost five years ago now turn into reality."

When complete, the nearly 3,300 acres of land will be covered in 1.3 million solar panels, each one of them 1.2 by 1.8 metres in size. A member of the Greengate Power team crunches the numbers on his smartphone and estimates the finalized project will be roughly equivalent to 1,600 Canadian Football League fields.