Ontario Dangles Carrot for Rooftop Solar With Feed-in Tariff Plan

The Ontario Power Authority bolted ahead of its North American neighbors in creating a feed-in tariff for renewable energy back in 2007 — basically agreeing to buy clean energy from its customers at a set rate over a certain period of time. But the Canadian province’s utility got a bad rap, with solar advocacy groups who faulted OPA with setting the price for solar energy too low and failing to encourage community-based energy projects.

Now Ontario, Canada’s top wind power producer, wants to change that. The legislature is considering a beefed up feed-in tariff as part of the proposed Green Energy Act. If approved, the program, which could take effect this summer and address the criticism for the existing system: Homeowners and commercial energy companies using wind, hydro, solar, biogas, biomass and landfill gas to produce electricity could all qualify under the new proposal, as well as community groups generating renewable energy.

Of all the energy projects that might benefit, small-scale solar installations (no bigger than 10 KW) get the highest tariff as part of an effort to encourage 100,000 residential solar rooftop installations. According to an announcement from Ontario’s Environment Minister yesterday, that number of installations could make rooftop solar account for 1 percent of Ontario’s supply mix. At up to 80.2 cents per kilowatt-hour, these rooftop projects could fetch a rate nearly 10 cents per kilowatt-hour more than any other type of project, nearly double the rate of large ground-mounted photovoltaic installations — and push energy from small-scale solar well beyond parity with standard electricity rates — depending on how meetings about the pricing structure shake out next week.

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