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News Canadian Energy Bytes February 6, 2008 The Great Lakes May Soon be Home to Offshore Wind by Graham Jesmer, Staff Writer The waters of the Great Lakes, near the shores of Canada, may soon be home to offshore wind power. The Province of Ontario's Ministry of Natural Resources has lifted a deferral on applications to produce offshore wind power in the province's waters. Full details... Straw-bale homebuilder shares expertise Eco-friendly advice part of the course at Trimline Training Centre Jane Marshall Freelance Saturday, January 26, 2008 Edmonton Journal: CanWest news Service If you could build a house with R-50 insulation values, fire-resistant enough to last two hours in 1800-plus-degree conditions and had 20-per-cent lower heating costs -- would you do it? Full details... Alberta regulators free the wind Electric power generation cap removed Geoffrey Scotton Calgary Herald: CanWest News Service Wednesday, September 26, 2007 CALGARY - The Alberta government and its electric system operator are lifting a contoversial cap on wind power generation that critics say has stymied growth in the province of one of the fastest-growing sources of power in the world Full details... International Energy Bytes February 22, 2008 Energizing India to Provide Micro-Loans for Renewables Boston, Massachusetts [RenewableEnergyWorld.com] Green Microfinance (GMf) and MicroEnergy International (ME) have announced the launch of Energizing India. The microfinance institution, Evangelical Social Action Forum (ESAF), has contracted with Energizing India in its endeavor to provide micro energy products for its 232,310 clients (micro-businesses and families) in four Provinces in south India. Full details... www.solarbuzz.com August 17, 2007Brentwood, CA, USA: Pinn Brothers to Build 455 Solar Homes Pinn Brothers Fine Homes, a Northern California homebuilder, is adopting an aggressive regional strategy to standardize solar energy into its building practices. Full details... Edmonton Journal Articles www.edmontonjournal.com Learning how to harness solar energy CarbonFree Car Goes to 60 on zero SOLAR REVOLUTION: A SERIES FROM RADIO ONE 99.1 FM The Sun has long been recognized as the source of life on our planet. A universal symbol of energy and optimism, more recently it's also seen as the key to resolving one of the most serious problems facing our planet - the impact of fossil fuels on our environment. Solar energy is clean, abundant, free and inexhaustible. But we are only at the very early stages of understanding how to harvest its power.In Ontario, the government's plan for a new energy supply system has renewed the debate about the potential not just of solar energy but all its derivatives, from wind to biomass fuel to hydro. On Solar Revolution, we meet the pioneers who are changing the way we think about power.In this series, we find out more about the brilliant solar science driven by a Toronto nano-scientist; we meet community pioneers who are investing and building solar capacity and we look at builders and designers who are experimenting with innovative building techniques and consumer products that exploit solar energy. We meet a manufacturer who sees the potential of solar energy to transform the world's poorest slums and policymakers and environmentalists who are working towards the Holy Grail... a source of clean energy that will never run out and that does no harm. http://www.cbc.ca/toronto/features/solar/index.html SOLAR REVOLUTION - Solar Paint Ted Sargent is a pioneer in solar science. He's working on solar technology that could literally be woven into every aspect of daily life, from our clothes to our roads, using what is known as a spray-on solar cell. The implications for our energy systems are profound. As Ted says, "Solar energy is not just an exciting science problem, but an incredibly important human problem."Ted Sargent Ted is working on solar nanotechnology with the potential to make solar energy very cheap and allow society to collect it on a huge scale. Currently, solar technology costs more to build and install than most people are willing to pay. Solar panels, for example, the technology most commonly associated with solar energy, are installed on your rooftop. The cost of collecting one kilowatt per hour of solar energy (about a third of the electricity an average household uses on any given day) is about $11,000. Audio: Mary Wiens talks to Ted Sargent (runs 7:48) REAL WINDOWS QUICKTIME Not only are panels expensive to install, they capture only the visible portion of the sun's rays so they work only on sunny days. Ted's focus is the infrared portion of the sun's rays which accounts for more than half of all solar energy. What's more, infrared energy is available to us even in cloudy weather. The Eureka Moment As with so many eureka moments in science, Ted's came while he was working on something else. He wanted to develop a camera that could see in the dark and was working on a sensor to measure infrared rays.
What If Every Surface Was Solar? Currently, solar cells like those on this NASA prototype only capture a fraction of the energy emitted by the sun (Photo by Carla Thomas - Courtesy NASA)Current technology captures only a fraction of that energy. Even the best plastic solar cells available capture only 6 per cent of the sun's radiant energy, none of it in the infrared spectrum. By focusing on the infrared portion, Ted is hopeful that new technology based on his research could someday capture up to 30 per cent. The secret is "quantum dots," particles made from semiconductor crystals. They can be tuned to absorb particular colors of light, dots so tiny they can be dispersed in a solvent and then painted onto something else - a house, a car, even a sweater. Sargent imagines clothing that could be used to charge cell phones and laptops, electric cars powered by a solar cell on the roof or roadways covered with solar cells. "If only we could find a way to coat those kinds of structures," says Sargent, "to make building materials or paving material out of solar energy converters, we would have a massive resource we could then tap."Ted figures the first practical applications of this research could be on the market within a decade but he's reminded almost every day by headlines about rising fuel costs and climate change that the solution is urgently needed. Obsessed By A Solar Revolution "We're part of a race," he says. "We're running out of fossil fuels, and the cost keeps going up, and even if we're not worried about that problem, the deleterious prospect of using those fuels affect us every day. It's at the front of the newspapers. You can't help but think of the implications for the natural world, the implications for civilization, to capture the sun's rays in abundance."That sense of urgency is echoed in Ted's conversations with his graduate students. "The passion that the PhD students and post-doctoral fellows bring to this work is remarkable," he says. "They're working twenty hours a day in the lab in order to get there."And they push one another. "These kinds of considerations," says Ted, " how to get efficiency up, can we get another factor of 3 doing this, another factor of 10 doing that," are part of the talk during coffee breaks. "And every now and then in one of our meetings where we're making systematic progress towards this goal, I'll say, 'listen guys, this is great, and we're optimizing, but we need a revolution here. We need something to take us to next level.' Sometimes the grad students will say, 'Well, that's true but we just got a factor of 3 through systematic optimization over the last week. If we can give you another factor of 3 two times that's a factor of 10 and you know, that's a revolution. It's constantly on our minds." That's What Engineers Do The Sun's total fusion energy output is estimated to be 386 billion billion megawatts. (Photo Courtesy NASA)That's not the usual chit-chat the rest of us have over coffee. But Ted says the work has changed him, and changed his experience of standing in the sunshine outside the John Galbraith building on the University of Toronto campus where he and his colleagues work."You go outside and stand in the sun and it beats down on you," says Ted. "I mean it's incredibly powerful. And you can't but wonder, surely there has to be enough energy there for something as small as the earth. And indeed there is. And it's been powering life forever. This is our only energy source. It's the sun that feeds plants that ultimately feed us. Clearly it's power is vast. And one that's largely untapped. And as scientists and engineers, it's incumbent on us to make sure it's something we can tap into that's practical."Ted is convinced that when those problems are solved, solar energy will simply overwhelm our current reliance on conventional fossil fuels or nuclear energy. "Abundant, free and clean," says Ted. "Why would we do anything else. Well the answer is we haven't yet engineered our way through this. The limitations today are technological and ultimately that means they're human. And that's what engineers do. They break assumptions."http://www.cbc.ca/toronto/features/solar/sargent.html SOLAR REVOLUTION - Solar Jobs Renewable energy is becoming big business. Google is the latest big name to invest in sunshine. Last week, a company financed by Google announced it's starting what could become the world's largest solar cell manufacturing factory.Around the world, about US $30-billion was invested last year in renewable energy. But here in Canada, the market is practically non-existent. Mossadiq Umedaly (Courtesy Xantrex Technology)Audio: Mary Wiens talks to Mossadiq Umedaly (runs 6:40) REAL WINDOWS QUICKTIME Mossadiq Umedaly is a B.C. businessman who's hoping Ontario will produce Canada's first home-grown solar market. His company, Xantrex Technology, is a world leader in advanced power electronics, including electronics for solar photovoltaic systems.Mossadiq came to Canada from Uganda as a refugee in the 1970s and studied business administration at McMaster University in Hamilton. As a student he remembers his classmates discussing the companies they hoped to work for one day. "I never thought of myself as an employee," says Mossadiq. "I always knew I would be an owner." Canada's Only Manufacturer Eight years ago, his company, Xantrex, began buying up American companies in a bid to get into solar electronics. Xantrex's revenues grew from U.S. $10 million in 1998 to U.S. $143 million in 2005.Today, Xantrex is Canada's only significant manufacturer of solar products. The company builds high-end components called invertors, essentially the brains of a solar system. Invertors convert the energy from solar panels (which collect DC power) and transform it into AC power (which we draw from our outlets).But the company sells virtually all its products abroad because the solar industry in Canada is so small, primarily in off-grid applications such as cottages and telecommunications sites. Xantrex now owns more than a 50 per cent share of the U.S. solar market for invertors and competes successfully for contracts in countries like Germany, the world leader in solar products."We knew this would be a long-term growth market in North America, Asia, all over the world," says Mossadiq. "Like many entrepreneurs, you look at the world market and hope the home market will develop." A Break At Home But recently, Mossadiq came to Ontario, drawn by what he was hearing about the provincial government's plans to introduce standard offer contracts - an incentive program to kickstart a renewable energies industry in Ontario. The government will announce details this fall of its plan to offer 20-year contracts to small producers of renewable power. Solar energy will fetch the highest price of all the renewables, at 42 cents per kilowatt hour, compared to 11 cents for wind and bio-mass fuel. The reason: solar technology is the most expensive and least developed. It's hoped the premium price will stimulate the manufacture of solar products.It's a break Mossadiq's been waiting for. "What we see in Ontario is the beginning of a home market, which is fabulous because all the competitors we face in the world have a strong home market."But compared with what other countries are doing, Mossadiq says the Ontario government's incentives are relatively modest."It is small compared to some countries," says Mossadiq. "If you compare Germany, the incentive is over 65 cents per kilowatt hour. Korea has just put in a new one at 72 cents per kilowatt hour. Spain and Italy have about 60 cents per kilowatt hour." What Ontario's offering, says Mossadiq, is "not sufficient to make a mass market but for people who are inclined to invest, it will start the market, and I think it's a very good start." Job Growth: Faster Than the Speed Of... Many European governments have discovered that not only is solar a viable source of energy, but that the solar industry itself has enormous potential for creating jobs. Solar systems are much more labour intensive than conventional power systems. The huge plants that generate nuclear, coal and oil energy are capital intensive and highly-mechanized. But solar energy requires people... from the manufacturers of the solar products to the electricians, roofers and plumbers who install the solar systems.In Germany, the solar industry is the fastest growing sector of the Germany economy, with 30,000 people working in solar jobs. Renewable energy has even helped revitalize other industries. Germany's faltering steel plants have been re-energized by the wind-power industry. In the past six years, windmill manufacturers have become the second-biggest users of steel in Germany.Mossadiq believes that solar power has the capacity to transform other economies, especially those of the world's poorest countries."The world needs more and more power," says Mossadiq. "There's no going back to the horse and buggy days. A lot of people say conservation is the answer. It may be part of the answer, but we are going to need more power. You know, the power grid has not evolved very much, compared to electricity. And it needs to become smarter. It needs to enable the production of power right where the user is." Solar V.S. Slums Mossadiq grew up in Uganda. He has first-hand experience of how solar energy can transform the lives of people in the developing world. If villages could generate their own power, the migration to city/slums might be reversed. (CP Photo)"Solar technology will become more and more viable as we go into the future. We can expect to see villages powered with clean sources, powering schools with computers, libraries - connecting people to the world." That should make it possible for more people to stay in those villages instead of moving to the large urban centres, a movement that produces sprawling slums on the outskirts of the world's largest cities. Those slums are almost completely isolated from the city's sewage and power infrastructure.Returning to the subject of Ontario's solar incentives, Mossadiq says it's time to dispel the myth that Canada doesn't have enough sunlight to make solar power a realistic energy alternative. And while Mossadiq wishes Ontario had been more aggressive in trying to stimulate a homegrown solar market, he has an entrepreneur's innate optimism."I was excited because it's the first time a Canadian province has done this," he says. "We really want to see all the provinces do this."http://www.cbc.ca/toronto/features/solar/jobs.html SOLAR REVOLUTION: Building a Solar House A model of the winning designThe goal of the sustainable house competition was simple. Design an eco-friendly house so cheap and practical that builders can reproduce them by the hundreds in their next subdivision.The winners of the Archetype House Competition, held at the Design Exchange in downtown Toronto, were three architects - all of them women. Their design, Building Blocks, is easy on the eyes, easy on the environment, and easy on a builder's profit margin. Terrell Wong was the one who persuaded the other two women, Clelia Lori and Anne Stevens, to get involved. Terrell calls herself a solar geek, so for her, the critera of this competition was irresistable.Audio: Mary Wiens talks to Terrell Wong and Sean Mason (runs 7:07) REAL WINDOWS QUICKTIME "I have solar panels on my roof," she explains. "We all do." Her enthusiasm is infectious. "It's awesome. Mine was an experimental system at the time. It was one of the first evacuated tube systems that came into Canada. It's my hobby. What my husband spends on DVDs, I spend on solar."But installing rooftop solar panels is a pricey option for the average home-owner. Terrell spent $20,000 installing solar on her own house. But this design competition asked the designers to come up with something affordable, something developers would be interested in offering to the mainstream market. So for their award-winning design, the three friends offer solar panels as an upgrade, in the way that other designers offer granite countertops as an upgrade.A model of the winning designIt costs about $11,000 to collect one kilowatt hour of solar energy on the rooftop of your house, more than most people want to invest. So for designer Terrell Wong, her own house is the place where she really gets to play around with sunshine. "So the sun hits the panels on the roof, and the glycol heats up, and 90 per cent of the energy that goes into that heats my floors and heats my hot water tank. So it works 90 per cent in the summertime," and she grimaces, "and 20 per cent in the wintertime."And there's the rub. Current solar technology isn't all that efficient at capturing the sun's energy in the winter. But Terrell's a solar pioneer, willing to spend thousands so that someday, she can do her laundry for free. A Solar Pioneer
The Challenge: Mass Production Upstairs, in the room where the models are displayed, developer Sean Mason stands in front of the winning model home designed by Terrell Wong, Clelia Lori and Anne Stevens. He likes what he sees. You can almost hear him adding up in his mind what it costs to build.Sean Mason"The modularity of the house that won lends itself to being more efficient to build," says Sean. "It's not a lot of custom-build which means you can get some speed on site and when you're building production houses, it's really about how fast you can build and get someone in."Sean Mason doesn't build custom houses. But he wants to position Mason Homes as a mass producer of environmental homes. All Mason Homes are Energy Star-rated, the government-backed rating system to promote energy efficiency. There are many different kinds of pioneers in the solar revolution. Sean is a pioneer in one of the most conservative industries of all - the construction industry."As North Americans," says Mason, "we have a moral and an ethical responsibility, to do something better and if we don't, we're remiss in not doing that, we're negligent in not pushing boundaries a little bit more. That's why I like doing Energy Star houses. It's a little bit leading edge - not overly difficult - but it's leading edge right now."Like Terrell, Sean too is building his dream home complete with solar panels. But he says the manufacturers who sell the panels to individuals like him are pioneers in their own right - still not ready for mass production.
Demand Outshines Supply This is how solar pioneers talk, constantly weighing the pros and cons. But as new technology comes along, the options are changing, faster than anyone imagined. The biggest change of all, according to Sean? The buyers."They're banging on the door. Now consumers care, driving down from Barrie because it's the only place they can afford to buy land, and they're conscious," making connections between the rising cost of gas in their tank and the rising cost of heating their homes. Change, indeed, is banging on the door. Tonight, those changes are very much in evidence at the Design Exchange where the tiny model houses, with their imaginative features, ahead of their time, are displayed. And for some of these solar pioneers, designers like Terrell Wong, the changes are a fact of daily life. The sunshine is already doing her laundry. http://www.cbc.ca/toronto/features/solar/building.htmlSOLAR REVOLUTION: Owning Your Own Power There's a solar revolution going on and Germany is leading it - switching to solar energy faster than any other country in Europe. Energy experts estimate that in 40 years, Germany - one of the most industrialized countries in the world - will be entirely powered by clean energy.It seems like a miracle. But there is an explanation - it's called "standard offer contracts" - an agreement by the government to buy solar power from individuals. It's helped kick-start a solar revolution in Germany, along with a revolution in power distribution. Standard Offer Contracts The key to it is a 20-year contract. In Germany, if you produce solar power on your rooftop the government will buy it back from you at 62 cents a kilowatt hour. Here in Ontario, a similar program will be launched this fall. Homeowners who want to invest in solar technology can take those 20-year contracts to the bank. The contracts provide financial institutions with a government guarantee that the borrower will receive income from his investment.Standard offer contracts, or "feed-in tariffs", as they're called in Europe, have turned Germany into a world leader in solar energy. Many other countries such as India, Portugal, Japan, Spain and Denmark have some form of these incentive programs for feeding electricity generated from renewable energy into the grid. The market development stimulated by this - initially in the wind energy sector - created jobs for over 20,000 people in Germany and 15,000 in Denmark.As a result of the associated economies of scale and competition among manufacturers of windmills, production costs have been reduced by 50 per cent since 1991, and demand is growing around the world, stimulated by the improved technology. Solar Pioneer in Germany: Hermann Scheer Hermann Scheer (Courtesy Hermann Scheer)Hermann Scheer, the man behind this revolution in Germany, is a veteran of the Bundestag, the German parliament. After 20 years of selling the concept to the German public, his revolutionary ideas were legislated in 2001 when the Renewable Energy Sources Act was passed. Scheer attributes the success of the program to what he calls an "irresistable combination of freedom and autonomy" - freedom for individuals to generate their own power and do good for the environment at the same time, two values that often conflict.Audio: Mary Wiens talks to Hermann Scheer and Jed Goldberg (runs 9:58) REAL WINDOWS QUICKTIME As Scheer puts it, "Normally, social commitment and individual freedom are contradictory. But with renewable energies, you can get both."Scheer says it's hardly surprising that Germans were so quick to invest in solar energy once the legislation gave them the opportunity."I was not surprised." Sheer laughs. "I was the initiator of this law. It happens what I have forecasted. As soon as people are informed and they get an awareness of renewable energy, all people would prefer clean, 'forever' energy instead of using atomic, coal or other fossil energies. The chance to get clean energy forever is a unique chance, and normal people would prefer that." Net Metering Net metering is the process whereby individuals sell solar power to the utilities. Homeowners use the solar power generated on their rooftops to supply their own power needs, and sell the excess to local utilities. A meter hooked up to the homeowner's system measures electricity going both ways - power coming in from conventional power utilities, i.e. oil or coal, and solar power being generated from the home. So during the hottest, brightest part of the day, solar arrays can pump electricity back into the grid, spin the electric meter backward and lower electricity bills.
A Natural Revolution Scheer believes that if this kind of revolution can happen in Germany, it can happen even faster in Canada given this country's huge natural resources."If you look to countries like Canada," says Scheer, "with such a large area of several million square miles, and relatively few people, it would be very very easy to come in a very short run to an energy system only based on renewable energy sources from indigenous sources."As Scheer compared to Canada's 33-million and an even more industrialized economy.Pickering Nuclear Station went into servicepoints out, Germany has 85-million people in 1971 (CBC)Here in Ontario, while the provincial government sees the potential of solar energy and is introducing its own version of "standard offer contracts", it is also proposing to build new nuclear reactors and repair the existing nuclear reactors.Scheer says he can't understand why the Ontario government is even talking about building nuclear reactors at a time when Germany has begun shutting them down and has legislated a ban on nuclear energy by the year 2021."I have heard about new nuclear power plants in Canada," says Scheer. "I think there is no rational argument to do that, if you compare that with the potential of wind, to take only one example of a complementary element to the existing hydro power potential in Canada. The combination of wind and water only could lead in Canada, in the run of very few years, less than 10 years, to an electric power structure only with renewable energies. Totally clean, totally clean." He pauses and revises his forecast. "I think it could be possible in 5 years."Here in Ontario, the government has set its price for solar energy at 42 cents per kilowatt hour. The government will also offer to buy back wind and biomass energy, but at a much lower price - 11 cents per KW hour. Because solar technology is the most expensive, the premium is intended to kick-start a solar industry. It's a "declining incentive", designed to lure early adopters. The premium price is phased out altogether, when the technology becomes cheap enough so that incentives aren't needed. Solar Pioneer in Toronto: Jed Goldberg Jed Goldberg (Courtesy Earth Day Canada)Jed Goldberg is one of those solar pioneers who's willing to invest in the technology now. He's been organizing neighborhoods in Toronto to go solar. The first such effort involved 75 homeowners in an east-end neighborhood who came together to make a bulk purchase of rooftop solar photovoltaic panels. His latest initiative is called WISE, the West Toronto Initiative for Solar Energy."The Riverdale group really only took a few months," says Goldberg. "And this was before the standard offer contract was even announced. As soon as the standard offer contract was announced, we decided to go into West Toronto, and in a matter of only a few weeks we already have 200 people who are interested in having solar panels installed on their roof."The most critical piece of any incentive program, says Goldberg, is making it worthwhile for homeowners to participate. "It's going to ensure that the maximum number of those 200 people will sign contracts." And if that movement spreads across the country, as more citizens take control of their own electricity needs, solar advocates predict it will bring down the cost of solar technology so that it becomes a mainstream option, rather than the purvue of "early adopters".Goldberg says the other benefit of solar technology is its simplicity. "With solar, there are no moving parts, no pumps. You can just forget about it. It doesn't need maintenance."But if the average homeowner isn't given the right kind of help to get going - government incentives and attractive financing to get involved in solar energy, Goldberg doesn't expect a revolution. "To be blunt," he says, "the payback is so slow that people will avoid it." http://www.cbc.ca/toronto/features/solar/owning.htmlSOLAR REVOLUTION - Lessons from the Internet Every revolution needs money. Environmentalists say that's what it will take to turn solar energy into the foundation of Ontario's power supply. They believe history is on their side - recent history. The first computer technology was financed by the U.S. military.Keith Stewart (Courtesy World Wildlife Fund)Audio: Mary Wiens talks to Keith Stewart (runs 7:15) REAL WINDOWS QUICKTIME Keith Stewart is a solar activist who wants the Ontario government to play the same role with solar technology. He's convinced it could produce another revolution. He's just had a couple of solar thermal panels installed on his own roof at a cost $5,700. They're hooked up to the water tank in his basement. Keith figures it'll take eight years to pay for itself. His next reno - solar electric. That could cost anywhere from eleven to twenty thousand dollars.But Keith's not your average homeowner. He's a committed environmentalists. For most homeowners, the cost of installing solar is more than they're willing to pay.Keith works for the World Wildlife Fund, one of 11 environmental groups that are banding together to try to force the government's hand. They want an environmental assessment of the government's 20-year energy supply plan, details of which were recently announced. The plan includes spending up to $83-billion on nuclear plants and fixing the province's aging electricity system.Solar pioneers like Keith Stewart are convinced the government's plan underestimates the potential of solar energy. They want the government to take a much bigger role in turning solar energy into a mainstream option.Stewart thinks a decentralized approach to power generation is better - the same way we have distributed computing power. (Photography © Toronto and Region Conservation)"We need government policy to make a transition," says Keith. "Some of this will happen in any event but if we want to hit a tipping point, to get a genuinely different system, we're not going to get that if the government takes several billion dollars and pours it into reinforcing the old system."To Keith, it's simple. The government is trying to fix an old system, when he believes it should spend that money building a new system, from the ground up - a system in which home-owners, co-ops and individual companies generate much of their own power."It's almost as if our energy planners are looking at building mainframe computers when the world has moved onto laptops and Ipods," says Keith. "People were telling you that mainframes will always be needed. Not a lot of those people are still working in that industry if they haven't made the shift. Laptops do more than mainframes ever could. I think we're on the brink of the same paradigm shift in the energy field."The U.S. military was the first to invest heavily in computer technology. Keith says the same thing is needed now for solar energy - money and rules that allow everyone to become a power broker."The same way the internet required some rules," he says. "Very simple so everyone could communicate with each other. We need clear rules to access the energy grid. Also providing supports which enable people to participate. Because we're either spending money on green alternatives or spending vast amounts on nuclear or fossil plants."
The Price of Admission Many environmentalists hope that government incentives to kickstart Ontario's fledgling solar industry will give homeowners a chance to get involved. But not everyone thinks it is realistic to expect individuals to produce power for the grid.Paul Shervill is with the Ontario Power Authority. He's responsible for developing the renewable energies file for the OPA. He also writes the standard offer contracts the government will introduce this fall.Paul Shervill (Courtesy Ontario Power Authority)Audio: Mary Wiens talks to Paul Shervill of the Ontario Power Authority (runs 9:01) REAL WINDOWS QUICKTIME The 20-year contracts are meant to stimulate solar manufacturing and offer a premium price for solar energy. The government will also buy other renewable energies such as biomass fuel and wind energy for 11 cents per kilowatt hour. Solar is priced much higher at 42 cents per kilowatt hour. Paul Shervill says the reason is that solar technology is the most expensive, so the government is prepared to offer a premium.Shervill says he had developers and medium-sized businesses in mind when he was writing the rules for standard offer contracts - not individual home owners.And yet when Premier Dalton McGuinty announced the price the government would offer for solar power, Shervill's office suddenly started getting calls from interested homeowners. A Surprising Interest In Germany, homeowners sell power back to the utility grid at 62 cents a kilowatt hour. (Courtesy Wagner & Co, Cölbe)"When it became apparent that even small homeowners might consider putting a one kilowatt solar array on their roof and selling that energy to their local distributor at 42 cents, it was a bit of an eye opener to us... a pleasant one because we were delighted to have them."But Shervill is concerned that individual homeowners may have an unrealistic idea of what it means to invest in solar technology. "We just want to make sure that when people are considering making that investment that they understand what the options are and what the payback is, because solar technology, photovoltaic technology in particular, is at a relatively early stage of development and it's still relatively expensive."Paul Shervill says he can't even tell whether the price being offered for solar is a fair one. "There isn't enough solar out there to know what the price is," he says, "so we decided to set it at the 42 cent rate for the first couple of years, and use it as a price discovery mechanism. And a lot of interest was generated. We saw it because after that announcement, we got calls... a lot of them from small developers who were looking at putting solar facilities into small business or even home settings. I admit I was surprised that developers that small, down to individual homeowners, were interested in standard offer, yes." A 20-Year Plan? Shervill wants to make sure early investors don't have an unrealistic idea of the potential of solar energy.Will homeowners play a significant role in contributing to Ontario's power supply? (Courtesy of the West Toronto Initiative for Solar Energy)Forty-two cents per kilowatt hour sounds like a great price, especially when you consider that homeowners currently pay only 6 cents per kilowatt hour for conventional fuel. But he says it won't seem quite as attractive once you do the math.At the current cost of solar technology, individuals typically spend about $11,000 - $15,000 installing a couple of solar panels on a rooftop. By selling it back to the local utility at 42 cents per kilowatt hour, through a standard offer contract, that homeowner might produce about $50 worth of energy a month, or $600 over the course of a year.Based on Paul Shervill's calculations, given the initial installation costs, it may take 20 years to recoup the investment.The Ontario Power Authority isn't convinced individual homeowners will play a significant role in contributing to Ontario's power supply over the next 20 years. But many environmentalists are equally convinced that the OPA is wrong. Several environmental groups have mounted an intense lobbying effort behind the scenes to make sure the OPA's solar package is crafted to make it more attractive for individual homeowners. Elsewhere, the Parade Goes On They have the example of other government solar incentives to go by. Germany, Austria, Denmark and recently, California, are actively encouraging home-owners to sell renewable power to the grid.In Germany, the success of that approach has been especially striking. Since the German government introduced its solar incentives, or "feed-in tariffs" as they're called in Europe, an estimated 100,000 homeowners have been connected to the grid, using photovoltaic solar panels. Those individual generators account for two gigawatts of power.While still supplying only a fraction of Germany's total power demand of 75 gigawatts, solar generation is growing at a rate of 35 - 50 per cent a year. Those numbers have led to forecasts that Germany could be powered entirely by clean energy by the year 2040 and that in only ten years, German's peak power requirements could be met entirely by solar energy.Arnold Schwarzenegger (CP Photo)In California, the solar incentive program announced last year is known as the Million Solar Roofs bill. When Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger announced the program, he said the goal was to get one million homes under solar panels over the next ten years.Like solar incentive programs elsewhere, the California incentives won't last forever. After ten years the incentives will be withdrawn, on the premise that by then California's solar industry will be established and the prices will have dropped enough, to make government incentives unnecessary.Here in Ontario, there is no target figure to get home-owners involved. But without individual participation, environmentalists predict Ontario's solar incentives will have little impact.The program is likely to be up and running in November of this year. But until the details are announced this fall, the lobbying by environmentalists will continue to try to give individuals a central role in Ontario's future power supply. http://www.cbc.ca/toronto/features/solar/price.html |
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