Canadian developer Concord buys wind farm, plots new data centres

Concord Pacific Developments Inc. acquired a field of 50 wind turbines from Potentia Renewables Inc. for several hundred million dollars, deepening the Canadian developer’s long-term bet on renewables, its chief executive said, adding that he’s working on a move into data centres too.

The Golden South Wind Project is the largest active wind farm in western Canada’s prairie province of Saskatchewan. It has capacity of 210 megawatts, with 200 megawatts of that contracted — which it says is enough to supply 100,000 homes. It has a power-purchase agreement with the provincial utility Saskatchewan Power Corp.

“It’s an expanding sector, and it’s a good, reliable, steady investment,” Concord Pacific chief executive Terry Hui said in an interview. He added that Canada’s federal government wants to grow the sector.

Vancouver-based Concord Pacific was founded in 1987 and is one of Canada’s largest real estate developers. It branched into renewable energy about 15 years ago. The Saskatchewan deal almost doubles that arm of the company’s total installed capacity, to about 543 megawatts. It has plans for other projects in early stages of development which could generate several hundred megawatts more.

“There are a lot bigger plans than this,” Hui said, pointing to the Amisk Hydroelectric Project in northwest Alberta, currently in the planning stages.

Artificial intelligence is one factor, along with others like electric vehicles , that are likely to create “big increased demand” for power, and that “can be supported by renewables,” Hui said.

Concord Pacific is also working on building “a few” so-called powered shells — purpose-built facilities to house AI data centers — across Canada, Hui added.

These server farms would be “urban, low latency, smaller-scale” and under 50 megawatts. “It’s not hyper-scale,” he said.