Canadian Solar announced today that it plans to establish the country’s first solar module manufacturing facility in Guelph, Ontario, just an hour or so northwest of Toronto. The new facility will be capable of making 200 megawatts of solar modules a year and will create 500 new jobs for the region. The announcement wasn’t a surprise. Canadian Solar told me shortly after Ontario’s feed-in-tariff program was launched that it planned to establish manufacturing here to comply with the province’s local content rules. But the commitment, now official, brings good news to a government trying to justify the high prices ratepayers will end up paying for solar, wind and other clean energy sources under the feed-in-tariff program.

There was more positive job news the day before, when Germany’s Siemens AG announced plans to build a wind-turbine blade factory in southern Ontario — the first in the province — as part of a deal to supply 600 megawatts worth of wind turbines to Samsung C&T, which under a deal with the province of Ontario has agreed to develop 2,500 megawatts of wind and solar projects (2,000 MW of it wind) by 2016. “The implementation of this agreement will create up to 300 ‘green collar’ jobs and up to an additional 600 construction and indirect service jobs over its term,” according to a press release announcing the deal. Like the Canadian Solar announcement, we knew it was coming (even though we didn’t know Siemens would be involved) but it’s nice to finally see some specifics related to job numbers and the kind of manufacturing that will take place.

Here’s the government’s press release, which — no surprise — touts both the Canadian Solar and Siemens announcements and claims that FIT contracts issued to date mean thousands of new jobs. “The 694 clean energy contracts already announced are expected to create approximately 20,000 direct and indirect green economy jobs over five years and about $9 billion in private sector investment,” it reads. Of course, once your start throwing in “indirect” jobs you can pretty much make up whatever numbers you want. Still, there’s a buzz in Ontario and despite some fumbles — such as the lowering of the price for small ground-mount solar systems, which has created a political shitstorm — we are seeing substantial investments (or commitments to invest) in the province. We’ll have a better sense of the true numbers after the first quarter of 2011, when many of these new facilities are expected to be operational and when stricter local content rules for solar go into effect — that is, when local content requirements for solar projects less than 10 kilowatts in size jumps from 40 to 60 per cent, and for larger solar projects from 50 to 60 per cent.

Last week, Austrian electronics company Fronius International announced it was establishing a solar inverter manufacturing site in Mississauga (just west of Toronto) that would produce 50 megawatts of inverters annually and, once operational by the end of the first quarter 2011, will employ about 100 people. “Ontario is one of the most important markets of the future for Fronius,” said Romuald Goure, managing director of Fronius Canada. (more…)

I reported Tuesday that Bosch Solar, a subsidiary of German conglomerate Bosch Group, had signed a deal with Calgary-based solar inverter maker Sustainable Energy Technologies that will see the firms integrate their respective products to create a kind of all-in-one solar package for the Ontario market. Sustainable Energy’s parallel inverter product, Paralex, would be integrated with Bosch’s micromorph thin film solar modules along with all necessary wiring. This would make it relatively easy for any contractor or home builder to install the systems without the need for specialized help. The companies hope this combination will distinguish themselves in an increasingly competitive market.

Sustainable Energy says it plans to move R&D and its inverter manufacturing to Ontario, where a feed-in-tariff program has lured many companies, including Korea’s Samsung, Chinese-focused Canadian Solar and India’s Solar Semiconductor. Denmark’s Vestas is also seriously eyeing Ontario’s offshore wind market.

If Sustainable Energy and Bosch follow through with these plans, it’s likely that Bosch will have to establish some sort of manufacturing footprint in Ontario. Not to produce the thin-film cells, but rather to do module encapsulation. Together, both companies could create several hundred direct jobs, but Bosch’s manufacturing presence would likely be minimal.

What’s unclear is whether Bosch sees Ontario as a launchpad to the United States. Sustainable Energy has indicated that it does, but Bosch has kept relatively quiet and, in all likelihood, if it was to pursue the California market it’s likely to set up assembly facilities there. And like most of the “deals” announced around manufacturing in Ontario, most of this is just talk so far. Samsung has a comprehensive framework agreement with the province, so it appears to be the real deal. The rest are just testing the waters, trying to get a sense of whether they can negotiate more from the Ontario government beyond the generous feed-in-tariffs being offered today. Whether the province is willing to step up with tax breaks and loan guarantees — that’s unclear. But until we get that clarity, most of what we’re hearing is nothing more than noise.