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…)

Check out this story of mine in MIT Technology Review about Sundrop Fuels, a Colorado startup that’s trying to commercialize a process that uses the sun to gasify biomass, instead of burning a portion of the biomass itself to drive the gasification process. The technology is based on research carried out at the University of Colorado, Boulder, with help from NREL. The company believes the syngas from its process can be produced affordably in high enough quanity and quality that it could be refined into gasoline for less than $2 a gallon. One obvious hitch is the fact that the best place to harness and concentrate solar heat is in the U.S. Southwest — not exactly the place you’d go to look for surplus biomass resources. BTW: Sundrop is operating largely in stealth mode, and counts Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers as one of its venture backers.

On the topic of solar, Ontario’s feed-in-tariff program is gaining momentum. On Wednesday the province’s power authority announced the latest batch of projects to be approved under the program — these ones in the 10 kw to 500 kw range. A few surprises: Loblaw Group of Companies, the grocery giant, has applied to have 136 of its stores across Ontario rigged with solar PV systems. If all go ahead, it would amount to 21 megawatts just for this one grocery chain. Loblaw is starting with four pilot projects and will move forward from there depending on the results. Surprisingly, Northland Power Income Fund will be doing the installations. I say “surprising” because I typically associate this company with natural gas and CHP plants.

There also appears to be quite a few schools putting solar on their rooftops, most of the projects being handled by Ameresco. The other big player in this initial round is OZZ International Inc., which has been approved to move forward on several dozen projects across the province.

All this momentum continues to lure foreign manufacturers  and new business models to Ontario. Most recently SMA Solar Technology AG of Germany said it was establishing a 500-megawatt a year solar inverter production facility in the province that would serve the Canadian market. They join Korean’s Samsung, India’s Solar Semiconductor, Germany’s Bosch and potentially Denmark’s Vestas.