SunEdison plans to unveil tomorrow a 1.135-megawatt solar PV system at San Diego’s Alvarado Water Treatment Plant. On its own not such a big deal — particularly in a progressive jurisdiction like California — but it’s yet another demonstration of where and how solar electricity can be put to good use, setting an example for other communities to follow.

Personally, I’m getting quite hyped about some of the projects in the pipeline in Ontario. Even though the Ontario Power Authority, in its first round of standard offer contracts, only approved this week three solar projects totalling 23 kilowatts, I’m encouraged by some of the projects in the planning stages. Toronto-based SkyPower and its partner SunEdison, for example, initially announced plans to build up to 50 megawatts of solar PV in Ontario, broken into a few solar parks at about 10 megawatts each. SkyPower CEO Kerry Adler told me last week — and you’ll hear this repeated in an upcoming podcast — that his company has scoped out 120 megawatts worth of projects, which includes a mix of large solar parks and many building rooftops. Arise Technologies also has plans to build a solar park of up to 1 megawatt at the new Portlands Energy Centre being constructed just east of downtown Toronto. Another company, Mondial Energy Inc., is exploring similar projects. And, of course, Exhibition Place is looking to expands its 100-kilowatt Horse Palace system to 2 megawatts. Just from these projects, assuming these companies follow through (and there’s no guarantee they will), we could be looking at more than 100 megawatts of solar power within the next few years feeding the Ontario grid.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 28th, 2007 at 9:58 pm and is filed under Main Page. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.