SkyPower/SunEdison land another 10MW solar project
SkyPower Corp. of Toronto and Beltsville, Maryland-based SunEdison announced today their second major solar farm project in Ontario. The companies said they have received approval under the province’s standard offer program to build a 10-megawatt solar farm in Thunder Bay up in northern Ontario (we’re talking 14 hours or so north of Toronto). Together with its other 9.2 megawatt project and the 60-megawatt-plus projects planned by California-based OptiSolar, Ontario is looking to develop at least 80 megawatts of solar over the next two or three years.
SkyPower, it should be noted, also has major wind projects across Canada. Its substantial portfolio of renewable energy projects attracted New York-based Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. to take a substantial stake in SkyPower last month — a major coup. It also got commitments from Lehman Brothers to invest in renewable energy projects.
I can’t wait to see one of these solar farms built and operating.
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.
July 9th, 2007 at 9:12 am
Unfortunately, not everyone is as keen on these large “industrial” sites being built in the Canadian countryside. See this article from the Toronto Star:
http://www.thestar.com/sciencetech/article/233358
I wonder what the Ontario Federation of Agriculture’s stance on this is? I know they have been very vocal about the use of agricultural land for wind turbines.
October 11th, 2007 at 9:28 am
Luckily, we are heading for a brighter future powered by the sun. We are learning all too slowly that the suns 1 1/2 horse power per square foot is for real. The family in the article needs to plant 200 feet of coniferous trees on the north side of their driveway and send the bill to their neighbour. As Skypower has said, they plan to plant trees to clean the air, why not on their neighbours property as well.
There is a solution for every problem in time, lets open our minds and hearts. Lets be considerate to our neighbours and the earth.