Solar Power for County of Two Hills No. 21, Alberta

A County Built Around Its Farms, Not Its Towns

County of Two Hills No. 21 is a rural municipal district covering roughly 2,600 square kilometres of east-central Alberta, with its administration office in the Town of Two Hills. The rural county itself, outside the incorporated Town of Two Hills and the Village of Myrnam, counted 3,412 residents in the 2021 census, down 6.3 percent from 2016, spread thin across a landscape of grain quarter sections, cattle and hog operations, and the hamlets of Beauvallon, Brosseau, Derwent, Duvernay, Hairy Hill, Morecambe, Musidora, and Willingdon. Myrnam itself counted 257 residents in 2021, down from 339 in 2016. That is a small and shrinking population spread over a very large area, which shapes almost everything about how we plan a job here.

The calls we get from this county split into three groups. Grain producers running dryers and bin aeration through harvest want to offset a power bill that spikes hard for a few weeks and sits low the rest of the year. Cattle and hog operators running barn ventilation and heat lamps year-round want steadier, more predictable production. And acreage owners on smaller parcels around Two Hills and Myrnam just want a lower monthly bill. We do not quote any of the three off a per-acre formula. Every quote starts with your actual meter data.

The Numbers Behind Solar in Two Hills County

The Town of Two Hills, the county's administrative centre, sits at approximately 53.72 degrees north, 111.75 degrees west, in the open aspen parkland belt of east-central Alberta. No Environment Canada station tracks bright sunshine duration anywhere inside the county, so the nearest verified 1991 to 2020 normal we can cite is Bashaw's, roughly 100 km to the southwest: 2,340 annual bright sunshine hours and a recorded 9,670 kWh a year from a 7.6 kW array, about 1,272 kWh per installed kilowatt. We label that plainly as a regional proxy, not a county-specific measurement, because nobody has actually put a sunshine recorder in this county.

ATCO Electric owns and maintains the distribution wires across County of Two Hills No. 21, verified against ATCO's own published north and east-central Alberta service territory, the same distributor covering St. Paul County, Lamont County, and Smoky Lake County around it. This is not FortisAlberta country, which matters because the two utilities use different micro-generation application forms and, at times, different approval timelines. We file the interconnection application with ATCO on your behalf regardless of which hamlet or quarter section the meter sits on, and approval typically takes two to six weeks once a complete application is submitted.

Kalyna Country Farmland, Not a Postcard Backdrop

This county sits inside Kalyna Country, the heritage and eco-museum district covering much of east-central Alberta's Ukrainian-Canadian settlement region, named for the highbush cranberry, kalyna, that grows wild here. Two Hills' own Heritage Park carries that history directly: two pioneer statues donated by the Dowhaniuk family and unveiled in 1992 to mark a century of Ukrainian settlement in the area. It is worth being clear about one thing people commonly get wrong, though. The famous World's Largest Pysanka, the giant aluminum Easter egg sculpture built in 1973, stands in the Town of Vegreville, roughly 31 to 45 km southwest, which sits in the neighbouring County of Minburn No. 27, not in County of Two Hills No. 21. It is regional color for this part of Alberta, not a county-of-Two-Hills landmark, and we would rather tell you that straight than let the common mix-up stand.

Agriculture is the county's actual economic engine, supplemented by some oil and gas activity and food processing. Producers here grow wheat, oats, barley, and canola as the dominant crops, alongside cattle operations and a smaller number of hog barns scattered through the county. That mix of grain and livestock, more than any single crop, is what drives the load profiles we design around.

What a System Looks Like on a Two Hills County Property

Building for Open, Exposed Farmland

There is no National Building Code climatic listing specific to County of Two Hills No. 21, so we design to the nearest published figures, from Vegreville: a ground snow load of 1.9 kPa, an additional 0.1 kPa allowed for rain-on-snow, and a 1 in 50 year design wind pressure of 0.36 kPa. East-central Alberta sits well outside chinook country, so this county's ground frost commonly runs toward the deeper end of the 1.5 to 2.1 metre range typical across the Alberta prairie rather than the shallower depths common closer to the mountains. Ground-mount footings for farm installations here are set below that line, and rooftop racking hardware is rated to the same 0.36 kPa wind figure rather than a generic manufacturer default. On a quarter section with nothing to break the wind for a mile in any direction, that margin is not optional.

Two Hills County Solar Sizing and Savings Estimates

Based on the regional yield of roughly 1,272 kWh per kWp a year drawn from Bashaw's measured output, a blended Alberta rate of about 23 cents/kWh, and installed pricing of $2.25 to $2.85 a watt for roof-mount or $2.50 to $3.50 a watt for ground-mount.

Payback shortens for incorporated farm operations that qualify for the 30 percent federal Investment Tax Credit on capital equipment. There is currently no Alberta residential solar rebate.

Equipment We Install on Two Hills County Properties

Every panel we mount on a Two Hills County roof or ground array is a LONGi module, the world's top producer by shipped volume, chosen for the temperature tolerance and 25-year product warranty needed to hold up through the swing from a minus 35 January to a plus 30 July that this part of Alberta sees most years. Acreage homes typically run on APsystems microinverters, wired so each pair of panels operates on its own circuit, meaning a shaded or snow-covered module does not drag down the rest of the array. Larger grain and livestock operations step up to Solis string inverters, sized for the higher throughput those installations need.

How a Two Hills County Project Moves Forward

Two Hills County Solar, Frequently Asked Questions