Remote renewables cost more per megawatt. Measured against diesel and owned locally, they can still pay off.
On September 16, 2026, the Arctic hamlet of Naujaat, Nunavut, cut the ribbon on the Ikayuut Solar and Energy Storage Project: 1.4 MW of solar and 1 MWh of battery storage, built for $19 million on a reclaimed municipal scrapyard 400 m from the nearest homes. It is expected to generate 1,600 MWh a year, about 30 per cent of the community’s electricity, and to displace 400,000 litres of imported diesel a year. Its developer, Kivalliq Alternative Energy, is an Inuit-led partnership between Sakku Investments Corporation and Northern Energy Capital, and Naujaat residents filled all of the 8 to 12 construction jobs.
At $13.6 million per megawatt, including storage, the price looks indefensible by southern standards. Measured against the fuel it replaces, it is the point. Anahim Lake, where PRI was Foundation Engineer of Record, gives a rough comparison. Ulkatcho Energy Corporation’s 3.8 MW solar farm, on a road-accessible former sawmill site in B.C.’s Chilcotin, is reported at more than $20 million in total investment, including new roads, fire management and security: about $5.3 million per megawatt, with the station’s battery paid for separately.
Nationally, the sector ended 2025 with 25 GW of wind, solar and storage, meeting 9.7 per cent of electricity demand, according to the Canadian Renewable Energy Association, which projects capacity to double by 2035. That growth competes with grid power on price.
In remote communities the competitor is different. The Canada Energy Regulator counts 178 remote Indigenous and northern communities with no connection to a grid or natural gas, most relying on diesel for electricity and heat, and more than half reachable only by air. Every litre of that diesel is bought, shipped by sealift, barge or winter road, stored and burned, and its price carries all of it. Ikayuut is the first project completed under Qulliq Energy Corporation’s Independent Power Producer program, and sells its power to the utility under a long-term agreement. Solar North and Anahim Lake sell to BC Hydro under 20-year Community Electricity Purchase Agreements, a contract BC Hydro first signed with Ulkatcho Energy Corporation in spring 2024. They are also approved differently. On all four, the generation is owned by the community or by an Indigenous-owned company. Ikayuut is Inuit-led, and the Hamlet of Naujaat helped choose its site. Solar North, a 2 MW array at the Masset airport that began supplying power on December 5, 2025, is owned by Tll Yahda Energy, a partnership of the Council of the Haida Nation, the Skidegate Band Council and the Old Massett Village Council, which hired 16 solar installers on the island. Anahim Lake is owned outright by Ulkatcho Energy Corporation, and the Ulkatcho First Nation put $818,300 of its own money into it. In Inuvik, an Arctic town in the Northwest Territories, the Town’s 689 kW system at its Midnight Sun Complex was commissioned on April 23, 2026. Funding follows the same pattern: two of the four federal programs behind Ikayuut, the Indigenous Community Infrastructure Fund and the Indigenous Off-Diesel Initiative, are built aroundIndigenous-led projects. In remote Canada, community ownership is the approval path.
The strongest objection is scale. These projects run from 689 kW to 3.8 MW, they are expensive, and a firm or an investor cannot build a growth strategy on a handful of them. That would be true if they stayed isolated. They do not. Diesel replacement across 178 communities is a portfolio, and the policy tools are being built for it: B.C. has set a target of cutting diesel on its remote grids by 80 per cent by 2030, the Clean Electricity investment tax credit of up to 15 per cent is now available to designated territorial Crown corporations and to certain corporations owned by Indigenous governments under Bill C-15, which received royal assent on March 26, 2026, and Budget 2025 committed $1 billion to an Arctic Infrastructure Fund.
The technology for remote renewables is proven. The engineering that makes it work on permafrost and small diesel grids, and the ownership that makes communities want it there, are where the next decade of growth in Canadian renewables will be decided.
Planning a renewable or hybrid project in a remote or northern community? The PRI Team is here to take your project from concept to completion.