There's been a lot of discussion going on about the spiraling cost of electricity in Ontario, now and projected. I've already done almost everything I am willing to do on the consumption side and it looks like the bills are going to just keep going up. Although we Ontarians are using less power than ever (the IESO website http://www.theimo.com/imoweb/marketdata/marketSummary.asp says we keep setting monthly record lows) we just got hit with an increase at the beginning of May, we're about to be hit with another increase when the HST starts at the beginning of July and many are already seeing higher bills due to time-of-use pricing (which the government has finally admitted was designed to modify your behaviour and not to save you any money - or even be particularly cost-neutral).
So I've decided to do something about it on the generation side.
Part of the excuse for the May price hike was something called a Green Energy charge. This really stems from the Green Energy Act that was passed last fall and all those huge wind and solar farm contracts the government has been handing out.
But how can the little guy get in on it?
Well, in addition to creating the feed-in tariff (FIT) for the big guys, the Green Energy Act also directed the creation of a microFIT (http://microfit.powerauthority.on.ca/) program so that individuals could participate with installations generating 10kW or less.
So I started investigating how I could use the program to offset the cost of consumption with the revenue of generation.
Traditionally, there was not much you could do that ever had a hope of breaking even. However, under this program there are two options available to the homeowner: wind and solar. Wind is really a non-starter for most because, while its got a lower captial cost, you'll almost never be able to do that in a residential neighbourhood (most of your neighbours will hate you) and currently they pay only 13.5 cents/kWh. Solar, which was always non-economic with its large capital cost, has been made atttractive because they are paying 80.2 cents/kWh - this was designed to make a reasonable return on investment.
So I started looking into solar a little deeper...
So I've decided to do something about it on the generation side.
Part of the excuse for the May price hike was something called a Green Energy charge. This really stems from the Green Energy Act that was passed last fall and all those huge wind and solar farm contracts the government has been handing out.
But how can the little guy get in on it?
Well, in addition to creating the feed-in tariff (FIT) for the big guys, the Green Energy Act also directed the creation of a microFIT (http://microfit.powerauthority.on.ca/) program so that individuals could participate with installations generating 10kW or less.
So I started investigating how I could use the program to offset the cost of consumption with the revenue of generation.
Traditionally, there was not much you could do that ever had a hope of breaking even. However, under this program there are two options available to the homeowner: wind and solar. Wind is really a non-starter for most because, while its got a lower captial cost, you'll almost never be able to do that in a residential neighbourhood (most of your neighbours will hate you) and currently they pay only 13.5 cents/kWh. Solar, which was always non-economic with its large capital cost, has been made atttractive because they are paying 80.2 cents/kWh - this was designed to make a reasonable return on investment.
So I started looking into solar a little deeper...