What Is That Thing Outside The Salisbury Big Stop?
SALISBURY – Irving Oil’s latest bid to reduce emissions is a little fancy and a little high-tech, and if you stick around the Salisbury Big Stop long enough, you can actually see it move.
Irving’s SmartFlower solar array sits outside its Salisbury restaurant looking like a combination of a giant, high-tech flower and an old-school satellite dish.
“It’s like a flower you can see that is also creating energy,” said Irving Oil representative Meghan McConchie. “It’s one of those things that you can kind of look at, standing in front of it and kind of be wowed by the presence of it.”
McConchie said the SmartFlower’s “petals,” which are outfitted with solar panels that are built to best pick up sunlight, activate depending on where that sunlight is coming from, allowing it to “wake up and put itself to sleep.”
“You can imagine each of the 12 petals that are opening up in the morning and when the sun comes out and it’s sort of positioning itself to say ‘good morning’ when the sun comes out – and as the sun sets, the petals slowly fold back and it goes to sleep.”
The SmartFlower is designed to generate between 4,000 and 6,200 kilowatts of electricity per year, that’s an output Irving claims will offset the electricity needed to power the pumps at the Big Stop.
This is one of several emissions-offsetting solar projects Irving Oil is rolling out, or has rolled out. Others include the solar array around the canopy above the pumps at the Irving service station at Millennium Drive in Quispamsis.
When asked how much power a Big Stop uses per day, McConchie was unable to provide a specific number, noting electricity volumes differ depending on the time of day and season.
“It depends on the infrastructure that’s in place, and how old the site is,” she said.
The array itself is manufactured by a U.S.-based firm by the same name, which specializes in self-contained solar electric systems designed to mimic flowers.
SmartFlower North America, the eponymous maker of the SmartFlower in Salisbury, is based in Boston.
McConchie said the array, which was installed on November 4, has already piqued local interest and snagged attention from those passing through.
“We’ve had several customers kind of drawn to it and we’re working on creating a QR code for it so they can go online and interact with the amount of energy that’s been harvested and such and learn more about it,” she said.
McConchie said there is some potential for future SmartFlowers in New Brunswick but noted that the inaugural one in Salisbury is a pilot that allows the company to test different means to decarbonize its retail sites.
“I think with any sort of innovation or pilot you have to start with one, and you’re going to learn from it before you potentially roll it out to other locations,” she said.
McConchie said the Salisbury Big Stop was chosen because it’s “an iconic pit stop” that sees traffic from around the Maritimes near the junction of passage to several major centers, from several provinces.
“If we want to test something and find out what consumers are thinking and learning and how it works at a high-volume site, this just totally fits the bill in terms of what we want to achieve from it,” said McConchie.
Without saying there will be more, McConchie told Huddle the hypothetical best place to build more would be high-traffic areas like other Big Stop locations.
“You want to ensure they have optimal exposure to solar and that you’re able to produce enough power that it powers the pumps,” she said.
“Hypothetically, in the future, I could see continuing to test pilots like this at a mix of iconic locations throughout our network both in Atlantic Canada and New England.”
SmartFlower, founded in Austria, specializes in commercial and residential solar panel builds. The company was acquired by Boston-based Energy Management Inc. in 2018.
Sam Macdonald is a Huddle reporter in Moncton. Send him your feedback and story ideas: [email protected].