TABER, Alberta — May 29, 2026 — Alberta carries more than 170,000 inactive oil and gas leases across over 340,000 acres of land. Firefly Solar and Gietron have broken ground on the Beaver Solar Project, a solar facility built on one such retired site in the Municipal District of Taber, and the first step toward a full-scale program to put clean power on brownfield oilfield land across the province.
Developed by Aurora Prairie Power, the Beaver Solar Project repurposes land already disturbed by oil and gas activity, reusing the existing roads and power lines rather than taking productive farmland out of use. The brownfield-to-solar approach was pioneered in the Municipal District of Taber by RenuWell Energy Solutions, whose work showed that retired well sites can host small-scale solar while helping to speed cleanup of the original lease.
On the Beaver Solar Project, Firefly Solar provides the operational expertise and infrastructure to build and run the site, and will generate the performance data that underpins a planned full-scale virtual power plant (VPP) brownfield program. A virtual power plant links many small, distributed solar and storage sites so they can be operated together like a single power plant. Gietron supplies the solar hardware, stepping into the role left open when the original module supplier exited to focus on larger projects in the United States.
The opportunity is large. Installing solar on even 10 per cent of inactive leases points to over 31,000 acres available for solar development in Western Canada. With the total cost of abandoning these sites estimated at more than $1.5 billion, repurposing the already-disturbed land for solar turns a growing liability into productive, revenue-generating infrastructure for landowners and municipalities.
“When I first heard about putting solar on retired oil and gas sites, I knew it made sense for Alberta and for the country, and I wanted Gietron to be part of it. The Beaver Solar Project is where we prove the model, and the hardware, behind a program that can scale across the province,” said Rocky Gao, Founder of Gietron.
“Firefly Solar builds solar across the country, and what makes the Beaver Solar Project stand out is the land it sits on, not its size. We bring the operational expertise and the infrastructure to build these sites, and the data to scale them. We are not building one project, we are laying the foundation for a brownfield virtual power plant across Alberta,” said Kyle McCormick, Co-Founder of Firefly Solar.
“The Aurora Prairie Power Solar Project represents a meaningful opportunity for the Municipal District of Taber by supporting economic diversification, generating new assessment and tax revenue, and advancing responsible land use practices. By repurposing previously impacted oil and gas sites for renewable energy development, this project contributes to the long-term sustainability and resilience of our community while strengthening our local energy sector,” said Tamara Miyanaga, Reeve of the Municipal District of Taber.
The Beaver Solar Project is awaiting final grid interconnection and is expected to begin generating power later in 2026. The data and operating experience from the site will guide the next phase: additional brownfield solar installations across Alberta, aggregated into a single virtual power plant. Learn more at fireflysolar.ca and gietron.com.
