Spread the Word!

This week we received an email from the Green Party of Ontario about the province's spectacularly successful MicroFIT program which put Ontario at the top of the list of governments who take solar power seriously. Was it getting too successful? Please read...

"Last year, the Ontario government announced the MicroFIT program as a follow up to the Green Energy Act. Under the program, citizens who installed small solar energy projects (up to 10 kilowatts) were entitled to sell power to the grid under a 20-year contract at a rate of $0.802 per kilowatt hour. The government publicly said that this rate was to apply for both roof mounted and ground-mounted solar panels and would stay in place until a planned review in September 2011.

However, over the July long weekend, Minister of Environment and Infrastructure Brad Duguid decided to make a sudden change without warning. He announced that the feed in tariff for power from ground-mounted projects would be reduced by 27% to $0.588 per kilowatt hour. At the time of his announcement, there was a backlog of nearly 10,000 applications from citizens awaiting approval for ground mounted projects.

This cut is being imposed by the Liberal government and will potentially set back community based solar power in the province by years. Not surprisingly, demand for solar projects collapsed following the unexpected announcement, leaving solar installers and distributors to lose millions in inventory and training costs. The cuts also penalize thousands of Ontarians, mainly farmers, who took the government’s word and applied for MicroFIT contracts. In many cases, they invested tens of thousands of dollars based on the price advertised by the government. The present government's deception will be remembered for years and undermine the credibility of the efforts of any future government to support community renewable energy.

The MicroFIT program is administered by the Ontario Power Authority (OPA) which closed its period for comments on the rate cut yesterday. Ultimately, the rate cut will be a cabinet-level political decision which is likely to be finalized over this next week.

Given the short amount of time before the proposed cuts are finalized, we are asking for five minutes of your time to (...) send an email to your MPP to advise them/her of your opposition to these destructive cuts. The text of a model email is available at the GPO MicroFIT campaign web site."

'Nuff said; please follow up, no matter how you vote. Thanks!

Our Big Fat Energy Credit

Anyone depending on sun & wind to power their home dreads the month of November. It's usually the darkest and wind-stillest month of the year. Drizzle and wet snow will come straight down; compare that to the blizzards we can expect very soon, and I suppose we should be grateful for it...

A typical November day: no sun, no wind...

For solar and wind-powered folks like us things are a bit different. We almost welcome those howling storms that make the snow fly horizontally. It means lots of energy is being produced and stored in the battery banks. Same for those bright January and February days, when you can't go out without your sunglasses and sunscreen on: lots of sunlight bouncing off all that snow produces lots of solar energy. Call us crazy, but we can't wait till it gets cold & windy!

Until then, we'll just have to sit this dull November out. Looking at our charts I see we produced a measly 12.5 KW/hrs of solar energy and 9.5 KW/hrs wind energy over the past 7 days; that's a total of 22Kw/hrs. We typically produce that in 2 good days.

Still, the lights stay on at the Nolalu Eco Centre, together with the stereo, the fridge, our computers and even the big-screen video projector for those must-have movie nights.

Of course we're a bit more careful when using power, but what really saves our free-range bacon: it's days like these that we happily dip into the credit we've built up with the Power Utility. Each summer and fall we produce hundreds of excess Kilowatt-hours that all get pumped back into the power grid, producing a big fat credit at Hydro One. Think of it as a Power Piggy Bank that we're now taking some change out of.

Of course we should still be careful how much power we're using, as even big fat credits will come to an end. But at least we don't have to worry too much about those long dark days. And thank goodness, we can still have our movie nights!