Dave Peace is taking what nature offers for free and turning it into electricity. Peace has a small solar and wind energy operation set up for his small air base. He is a bush pilot and has been working in the Cree territory for 30 years.
The set up is in its second year and has completely changed his business. “It was awkward using a generator and burning gas all the time,” he explained. Peace is able to run most everything he needs. “Just the little set up I have here I run my radios, my fuel pump, my lights and the occasional power tool whenever there’s light work to be done.”
Of course all this technology costs real cash but in the long run it will save money and trouble.
“The initial investment is pretty high,” he admits. “But it depends what you want to do. If you want to run lights and maybe the bush radio, it won’t be that expensive. I don’t know how much it’s saved me in terms of actual cash but it’s saved me lots of problems. It’s very reliable.”
The environment is very important to him and he wants to provide an example for the trappers. They get to see his set up when he flies them out to their camps. In many instances he transports a lot of gas for their generators. “Some of them take 200 gallons of gas for the winter.”
The other consideration is the storage for the energy. “The batteries are the heart of the system. It you think of the electricity as liquid, the batteries would be the tank. It will collect while you’re not using the system then you can use the stored energy later.”
