Federal program, small town, one builder: how DLSC began

Event date: 2006-11-25

Why a small town was asked

Natural Resources Canada wanted to demonstrate solar energy inside a normal residential community rather than on a test rig. It approached the Town of Okotoks, about 30 km south of Calgary, and the town agreed to take part.

Once the town was on board, the department recruited a land developer, United Communities, and a homebuilder, Sterling Homes. The three-way arrangement was the point. It was meant to show governments at every level that a municipality, a builder and a developer could deliver solar heating to regular houses.

What the design promised

The community was planned as 52 homes sharing one solar system. Its centrepiece was borehole thermal energy storage, which parks summer heat in the ground for use in winter. In late 2006 the stated aim was to cover about 90 per cent of space heating from the sun, a share well above the roughly 60 per cent that European seasonal systems were achieving, and to cut about five tonnes of greenhouse gas per house each year.

Those were design-stage and early-operation claims. The houses had only just begun to fill up, so there was no multi-year record behind them yet. You can read about the buildings on the homes page.

Beyond the subdivision

Not everyone could move into a solar community, and at the time smaller options were being pointed out to households elsewhere. One was a rooftop solar water heating appliance from Enerworks, which collects heat into a storage tank for hot water. The solar hot water page covers how that kind of equipment works.

Early residents of Drake Landing were also saying that their bills had come down and that the houses felt comfortable, which was the sort of everyday evidence the program was after.

What became of it

Monitoring later recorded a 97 per cent solar share by 2012 and 100 per cent in the 2015-16 heating season. From about 2020 the system suffered deterioration and maintenance problems, decommissioning began in 2024, and most homes moved to natural-gas furnaces. For the current state of the field and Energy Centre, check with the Town of Okotoks or ATCO. The full numbers are on the performance results page.

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