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Alberta is one of the best locales for solar on the continent -- it's sunny most of the year -- and had an exploding renewables sector.

Until the far right O&G lobbyist provincial government kneecapped the sector.

A city like Calgary gets 233 days of sunny days a year. All across the prairies there is plenty of days filled with sun. British Columbia would probably not be great (like Seattle) but they could probably generate wind and hydro.

Calgary is quite sunny at 2400 hrs/year.

But not nearly as much as Vegas (3800) or LA (3250) or SF (2950).

Its not so much the days but the hours. Days start getting pretty short in winter. The sun also doesn't get as high in the sky so the efficiency of a fixed panel drops further.

Depends what you mean by viable. Solar is easily economically viable, but integration at grid scale is tricky when your peak summer generation is 10x your winter generation.

Cold is fine - solar panels perform better the lower the temperature.

That's what makes Calgary ideal for solar.