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The average Canadian home, based on a 2,000-square-foot space, uses roughly 26 to 33 kilowatt hours (KWh) of energy daily. In comparison to Strathcona Park Lodge (SPL), which can host up to 225 guests at a time and 75 resident staff, runs at a modest 45 to 50 KWh, using roughly 1,000 KW daily - the equivalent to the daily consumption of three houses. How DO they do it, let's find out.

.. For my first day on site, I’m treated to a morning spent with Strathcona Park Lodge (SPL) owner Jamie Boulding.



We explore the four-lake multi-storage dam system in the mountain behind, which, as he simply puts, “keeps the lights on” at the lodge. It becomes acutely evident that Jamie is driven by both honouring the multi-generations of his family before him who were the proprietors of the lodge, and also by doing right by the land. The simple yet sophisticated energy source was developed 40 years ago, with shared water rights on the land, the SPL is able to power and heat their entire ‘little village.

’ The installation of the Pelton wheel Big thinkers and regional tradespeople collaborated to build a small-scale dam system and installed a Pelton wheel – a water wheel that extracts energy from the force of moving water. On this day of my tour, we start by visiting site A known as the run of the river, where in 1989, Jamie and a team built a dam with nothing but manual labour and a large dose of problem-solving skills. “Keeping the energy up is the biggest investment,” he tells .

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