Wind turbines
Living Off the Grid in Eastern Ontario
Mother Earth News / William Kemp / October/November 2011
Twenty years ago, when my wife, Lorraine, and I decided to move off the grid, our motivation was simple. Lorraine wanted to move closer to her family, preferably to a piece of land large enough to offer some privacy and plenty of room to support her “addiction” to animals. A lot at the back of her family’s farm fit the bill (and the wallet). There was only one downside: It would have cost tens of thousands of dollars to connect the property to the nearest electric lines. The solution was obvious: Don’t connect to the grid and instead plan to run our house entirely with renewable energy. We put our plan into action, and have been enjoying off the grid living ever since. Here’s how we run our rural Ontario home using an absolute minimum of fossil fuel energy.
Video: OSEA Community Power 2011 and the FIT Review
Green Home TV took in OSEA's Community Power 2011 conference. This years conference focused on the OPA's review of the FIT program as well as looking at other industry developments and ways to grow community involvement in power projects. GHTV interviewed Kris Stevens, Executive Director of OSEA, who hosted the conference and discussed the conference's direction.
Ontario: Province retains control of solar energy
Recorder & Times / Nick Gardiner / 02 December 2011
Ontario Energy Minister Chris Bentley had little to offer municipalities seeking more control over wind and solar energy projects during a media telephone conference Thursday.
Questioned about the matter, the minister insisted a provincewide approach is the only way to ensure the process does not stall.
A patchwork approach of municipal regulations subject to frequent change amounts to "no rules at all" and would discourage investment in the industry, said Bentley.
He pledged to remain open to listening to municipal concerns -- and has already heard of some -- but made it clear the government will remain in control of the process.
Opinion: Liberal win doesn’t mean all’s fine with green energy strategy
Toronto Star / Tyler Hamilton / 28 October 2011
Another fix is needed with the FIT program itself. The rate structure is terribly out of date, and the Ontario Power Authority is already late in launching its two-year review of rates paid out for solar, wind, small hydro and biomass projects.
The rates under the FIT program were first announced in early 2009 and designed to assure a “reasonable” return on investment – about 11 or 12 per cent—for developers. The problem is that technology costs shift over time, sometimes dramatically. Solar is a case in point.
A recent report from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory concluded that the average pre-incentive cost of residential and commercial solar PV systems fell 17 per cent last year and a further 11 per cent in the first half of 2011.
“Solar cell prices around the world have gone down significantly,” Paco Caudet, general manager of solar module maker Siliken Canada, told me this summer. “We have brought down costs over the last five months alone by almost 30 per cent.”
You hear the same story over at Celestica, which is manufacturing solar panels and inverters in Ontario for other companies looking to comply with local content rules.
Mike Andrade, the company’s senior vice-president, echoed Caudet’s view. He said the original solar FIT rates were based on a price for panels and inverters that is now 30 to 40 per cent lower. “Developers can make a fine return on investment at a much lower FIT rate than we have now,” he said.
Yet we continue to wait for rate adjustments. In retrospect, the two-year review was a mistake. Rate structure reviews should be done annually so the program can more quickly adapt to a changing marketplace.
We might also want to ask: should developers of multi-megawatt solar projects and large wind farms be booted out of the FIT program entirely?
After all, the program was created so community cooperatives, small businesses, farmers and homeowners could participate more easily in an electricity system previously dominated by the big developers, who were the only ones with the resources to take part in a competitive bidding process.
The level of community participation hoped for just hasn’t happened under the FIT, and this may explain why the McGuinty government had such a poor showing in rural Ontario ridings. People in many of these ridings are feeling like big projects are being imposed on them and that they have little say in the process.
Video: Overview of Sustainable and Solar Energy in Ontario
Ontario is the first jurisdiction in North America to adopt a plan of guaranteed income from sustainable energy sources, a plan known as FIT (Feed-in-Tariff) that has resulted in a boon of solar installations and related industry in the province. Kris Stevens, Executive Director with the Ontario Sustainable Energy Association (OSEA) brings us up to speed with the FIT program and how they are involved with communities and individuals.
Leeds-Grenville candidates debate green energy future
Your Ottawa Region / J.P. Antonacci / 22 September 2011
The Oct. 6 provincial election is shaping up to be a referendum of sorts on the Liberal Party’s vision to turn Ontario into a global green energy centre.
At stake is the future of the Green Energy Act, which the Liberals contend reduces carbon emissions while creating jobs in the province’s lagging manufacturing industry, and the Conservatives claim drives up consumer hydro prices.
If elected, Conservative leader Tim Hudak has pledged to end the feed-in-tariff programs – FIT and microFIT – the Liberals created to spur investment in solar and wind energy projects by paying higher than market prices for electricity generated from renewable resources.
Burlington environmental demonstration store
HeadsUp CIPEC / September 2011
Opened in January 2008, [Walmart's] Burlington environmental demonstration store is expected to use 60 percent less energy than the company's typical supercentre store and to reduce carbon emissions by an estimated 141 tonnes. It is also expected to divert an estimated 85 percent of its waste from landfill through a variety of recycling programs. Walmart plans to take key learnings and roll out best practices and technologies to all next-generation Supercentres across the country. Environmental features of the Burlington store include:
