The Downtown Drumheller merchants and building owners have teamed up to add wireless music throughout the downtown core.
    John Shoff of Reality Bytes and Bob Sheddy of Century 21 have been researching for the better part of two years, on how to get music playing throughout the downtown core.
    A month ago, they tested a new Sonos speaker in a weather enclosure that allows multiple speakers to play synchronized music. The hope is, with enough speakers in the core, it will give the pedestrian shopper a seamless and elegant experience as they walk from shop to shop.
    “Bob Sheddy had approached me about this idea several years ago, and we have been brainstorming on a logical and cost-effective way to provide music throughout the downtown ever since,” said John Shoff. “The goal was to be able to provide Christmas tunes during the holiday season, spooky music at Halloween, you know various themes based on the seasons, etc.”
    Wifi will be the main source of consistent sound provided by Reality Bytes. This allows the speakers to sync together to work in harmony.
    “It would have cost thousands and thousands of dollars to replicate that network, and the project wouldn’t be feasible,” said Sheddy.
    So far, the following business owners have come forward to each purchase a speaker; Jeff Larsen of the Napier Theatre, Mike and Carol Todor of Third Avenue Arts, Dr. Ivan Chan, a local Chiropractor, Innovators Inc. - Critters 360 Building, Steven Peterson of The Brick, Alok Verma and Trevor Gough of Chartered Professional Accounting and Century 21 PowerRealty.ca.     
    Shoff is hoping to have the first set of speakers installed by the end of November.
    Mayor Heather Colberg commented, “Having these speakers in the downtown core will compliment the overall downtown revitalization program Economic Development is working on. I’m proud of the business owners and building owners who are willing to get involved to make our community a better place by purchasing these speakers to enhance our downtown.”
   The logistics of using traditional speaker systems and stringing speaker cables everywhere was an obvious issue so the two put their heads together and started looking at other options.
    “What we’ve come up with is something quite exciting,” said Shoff. “We can play music from a dedicated computer system that Reality Bytes will host & maintain free of charge, and deliver that audio content through our existing BYTEsurfer wireless network that blankets the majority of the valley and surrounding area.”
    “What I really am excited about, is that we can also broadcast live events, musicians, or announcements through the system as well. So, for downtown events we’ll have a fairly simple to use system that can wirelessly beam the audio content up to some or all of the speakers.” said Shoff.
    All of this can be done at the touch of a button straight from a smartphone.
    “We have a mobile app that can control this all very easily right from the street for fine tuning,” said Shoff.          And, as just an added benefit from this, we’ll be increasing the public WiFi hotspot coverage to blanket all of downtown, so people can easily connect and use the Internet while they walk from store to store.”
    The Town of Drumheller has agreed to placing the speaker enclosures on the street light poles, which ensures they are secure and can tap into power.
    They are also providing a bucket truck to assist with the installation of the system.  
    “I am also so happy to see the store owners be involved and on b
oard by sponsoring the cost of some of this equipment,” said Shoff “It’s simply a win, win for everyone, and I might add that the cost to the citizens of Drumheller is essentially zero, as this is all being done by donation from all parties involved.”

    With two major wind projects virtually shovel ready, Starland County might be hopping with economic activity in the very near future.
     Announcements from the Alberta Electrical System Operator (AESO) are expected this December for renewable energy projects. The competitive process to select projects has been underway for quite some time. This initial competition has the goal to add 400 Mw of power to Alberta’s grid.
    “The Renewable Electricity Program is designed to meet the Alberta Government of Alberta’s Target of 30 per cent renewables by 2030,” said manager of public affairs for AESO, Tara de Weerd.
    She explains  this process is structured into a series of competitions, and this is the first round to target 400 megawatts of renewable generation. It has gone through a request for expressions of interest and then a request for qualifications to inform bidders of the requirements and to allow qualified bidders to provide a bid price. This wrapped up in September.
    “At that stage, organizations would propose projects and they would have to demonstrate that technically they had the feasibility to put the project forward, they would be able to connect to existing transmission, they had the financial backing to make it go live, and that they could meet an in-service date of December 2019,” said de Weerd.
    The next stage was the request for proposal stage. This is where the qualified bidder would submit their bid price, this cut off  was in mid-October.
    “Now this information, the projects, and the price has gone to the Minister of Energy, and actually the Minister of Energy will decide what the winners are. We are expecting that sometime in December of this year for the first round,” said de Weerd.
    In Starland County, Suncor has been working on an 80-megawatt project in the Hand Hills. In November of last year, a spokesperson from Suncor told The Mail, it planned to pursue the Government of Alberta’s process to get the project rolling.
    The Suncor project calls for 54 wind turbines as well as an underground collector system and substation.
    BluEarth Renewables have also been diligently working on a project near Delia, which calls for 34 turbines that will have the capacity to generate 78 megawatts of renewable energy.
    Matthew Kreke, assistant CAO of Starland County said the projects have cleared the County’s permitting process.
    “They are waiting for the procurement prices to unfold and I think at the end of this month we should get a little more clarification on that,” said Kreke. “We do know all of the projects are supposed to be operational by the end of 2019 so they are going to have to make some decision here for sure.”
    “Both have been ready to go for a significant amount of time. It will be interesting to see if we get one or both.”  
    de Weerd of AESO says the call out has been well received. While Round one calls for 400 megawatts, the end goal by 2030 is for about 5,000 megawatts.
    “In the beginning with our request for expressions of interest… at that point there were about 80 expressions of interest, far exceeding our expectations and it was a mix of international, and Canadian companies, wind and solar, and the range of project sizes was really diverse,” she said.
    “At the request for qualifications stage where we were trying to hit the 400 megawatts, there was 10 times that amount that would have qualified. We feel fairly confident there is a good pipeline of projects there.”