50 MW of solar in Ontario? Wow!
SunEdison LLC of Baltimore and SkyPower Corp. of Toronto are teaming up for a joint venture that plans to develop, build, own and operate up to 50 megawatts of solar PV farms across Ontario, obviously to take advantage of the province’s standard offer program that pays 42 cents per kilowatt-hour for solar. I knew it was only a matter of time before some clever finance people crunched the numbers and figured they could make a business out of solar in Ontario. Considering the largest solar PV installation we have in Canada is only 100 kilowatts (likely to grow to 2 MW), this 50 MW commitment from SunEdison/SkyPower is a huge deal and could spark more activity.
“Construction of these solar photovoltaic farms in Canada will drive immediate new job growth while generating carbon free renewable energy. Common in the European market, only recently have solar photovoltaic farms begun to see broader adoption in North America,” the companies said in a statement. “Under the turn-key services model, SunEdison finances, installs, owns and operates photovoltaic power plants at the customer premise. SunEdison’s turn-key services model has been adopted by leading commercial, government and utility customers such as Staples, the State of California and Xcel Energy.”
The companies added: “Once the Ontario government’s standard offer contracts are implemented, the joint venture will be announcing the location of its first facility.”
This is a big day for solar in Ontario. Exciting times…
Tyler Hamilton is editor-in-chief of Corporate Knights magazine and a business columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the clean technology and green energy market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper.
November 6th, 2006 at 12:15 pm
Very neat. Most people don’t associate Canada as being the most ideal spot for solar energy, but the sun does shine a lot in the summer during peak energy demand.
For large scale production like this, I wonder whether concentrated PV makes more sense than the regular variety.
Stephen
November 9th, 2006 at 2:46 pm
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November 23rd, 2006 at 3:19 pm
How is this different that the Sunpark initiative? http://www.sunpark.ca/index.html