I just came across your website and noticed how similar your thoughts and your house our to ours. We just moved into a house we have been designing for a couple of years. It uses a ground source heat pump for heating and cooling but we also put in a masonry heater that will supply much of our heat. Solar panels have been delayed but are supposed to go up in a few months. You can read about our ongoing project at carlislegreenbuild.blogspot.com.

Anyway, just wanted to give you a big “cheers” for your efforts and your awareness.

Best,
David

Good work

To date ONLY Bill Murdock has got press coverage via his objections.

Everyone has to get their MPP out of their comfortable chair and get them to take a stand.

Visit them and ask them to step forward.

I sent a memo to a few of the folks on this.

Here’s hoping…

Kevin

I’m a businessman living in Conestogo and I’d like to address the announcement by the OPA proposing a rate reduction from 80.2 cents per watt to 58.8 cents for ground-mounted solar arrays.

The ground-mount rate reduction was announced saying that installation costs are the major factor in the greater return-on-investment (ROI) of ground mount systems. This isn’t true.

These modern ground units are mounted on state-of-the art solar technology and a completely installed 10kW system costs in the area of $100,000.00. They are not cheaper than roof-mounted systems. What they are - is more efficient. But its the government itself that set the microFIT limit at 10kWs and these systems CANNOT generate more than that 10kW ceiling. So, what’s being penalized here is a few pennies more of efficiency. What the OPA is saying is - “You can have a 10kW system, but if your system actually produces 10kW most of the time, we’re going to cut your returns by 25 percent.”

Even at that, none of our ground-mounted system customers project returns of more than 11%. So the government is rewarding inefficiency and penalizing intelligent thinking and design.

Under George Smitherman as Energy Minister, the OPA had positioned Ontario to be a leader in the North American market. But Minister Duguid’s kind of government-think is a recipe for a 2nd class solar industry that will never be able to compete in the North American market.

On the sensitive issue of ratepayers, the solution to percieved high rates for citizen-owned solar arrays is written right into the program. Unlike everything else government touches, the program is designed to ramp down over the coming years paying less and less to new applicants as time goes on. The same model is at work in Germany which just made a (pre-announced) 25% cut in its rates after 10 years. But not before it had spawned the world’s most mature solar industry. An industry incidently that rivals or perhaps by now surpasses the huge auto-industry in Germany. And isn’t that the whole point of the Feed-In-Tarrif program in the Green Energy and Green Economy Act - to pay higher rates at the beginning in order to incubate an Ontario based solar industry?

And guess what. It was working - until the day this announcement came from the OPA. Now the fledgling industry is already crippled - shot in the leg by it creator. People are being laid off. International suppliers are demanding full cash-up -front instead of down payments because they don’t trust the Ontario government anymore. The confidence and optimism that had been built up over time is being demolished in mere days.

The OPA sat on ground-mount applications for months, while the applicants invested time and money, and while businesses ramped up, confident in assurances from OPA that no reasonable application would be rejected and that the price per watt was iron-clad until the next review - in September 2011! Literally thousands of Ontario citizens and businesses have been seriously affected by the broken promise in this irrational pronouncement by the OPA.

The consequences of all of this are huge. What the government stands to lose is so much more than what the Minister hopes to gain in short-term political points. All of North America is watching this FIT experiment in the province of Ontario - and we really do have the opportunity to be a leader, a supplier, a guide for the rest of the continent. So are we just going to blow our reputation as an honest broker on the world stage, and destroy a fledgling industry and a lot of personal investment in the process? That would be a huge set-back for everyone who promotes alternative energy solutions in North America.

Someone in the Ontario government isn’t thinking about the province’s own stated goals in the Green Energy Act - and that’s dangerous right now, because everything is in place to move Ontario ahead to be a continental leader in an inevitable industry. Some province or state is going to lead the clean energy revolution. Apparently its NOT going to be Ontario.

I don’t want to see this opportunity lost because some individual couldn’t see the the unintended consequences of his actions. Premier McGuinty has to rein in the Minister of Energy. I don’t care if he resigns or stays. We just need him to reverse this unbeliveably inept decision.

Drew MacGillivray

co Owner/Operator Endless Energy Inc.
(past Environmental Lead
Centre for Applied Renewable Energy, CfARE, Brussels)

How far are you from the piece of land you purchased? Are you going to fence the lot? What are you doing for insurance? Any other concerns having the array where you don’t live?

Risky..

Would almost be better if they let people go up to 50 kw..economies of scale.