N.A.’s biggest solar PV farm planned for Ontario
I have an article in today’s Toronto Star about a California startup called OptiSolar that has just received approval from the Ontario government to build a sprawling 40-megawatt solar farm in Sarnia. Hundreds of thousands of OptiSolar’s proprietary thin-film panels will be used to cover nearly 900 acres of farm and industrial lands — the equivalent of about 680 football fields (NFL football fields). The project will be build in four 10-megawatt phases and is expected to start in 2008 and finish in 2010. OptiSolar Farms Canada Inc., a subsidiary of the California company, has struck a 20-year contract with the Ontario Power Authority to sell the power from the farm into the provincial grid at 42-cents per kilowatt hour, the established rate for solar power under the province’s new standard offer program. OptiSolar said it chose Ontario for this enormous project because of the standard offer program, which is unique to North America. The Sarnia farm, when complete, is expected to be the largest PV farm in North America and one of the largest in the world, championing other projects underway in Germany and Spain.
Perhaps most interesting is that the power authority, in its 20-year power system forecast, only counted on 40 megawatts of solar power in total being added to the Ontario grid between now and 2025. We’ve already surpassed that goal after just a few months of the standard offer program being introduced, assuming of course these projects actually get built. Obviously, and I’ve pointed this out in previous columns and posts, the power authority low-balled the potential of solar power in Ontario.
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.
