April Lindgren
Canada.com
April 26, 2007

The installation of one million solar panels on 346 hectares of land near Sarnia will make Ontario home to one of the largest solar farms in the world, Energy Minister Dwight Duncan announced Thursday.

"The McGuinty government is committed to building a cleaner, greener energy future for Ontarians," Duncan told reporters at a news conference held to announce the investment by OptiSolar Farms Canada, a division of California-based OptiSolar Inc.

"This project alone will contribute 40 megawatts to the grid by 2010 – the next largest photovoltaic project in North America was announced on Monday and it is only 15 megawatts."

The project, which will cost an estimated $300 million, involves installation of the half-metre-by-one-metre solar panels on the equivalent of 419 Canadian football fields.

That said, the massive undertaking will still only produce enough power to sustain 6,000 homes.

The power will be expensive. Under the terms of the agreement signed with the Ontario government, OptiSolar will be paid 42 cents per kilowatt hour produced over the 20-year-term of the contract.

And the system will generate only 40 megawatts when the sun peaks in the sky on clear, sunny summer days: When nights, cloudy weather and short days are taken into account over the course of whole year, it will contribute only about eight megawatts of power per day on average to the Ontario grid.

Total system demand late Thursday afternoon was just under 18,000 megawatts; peak demand in the summer can soar to more than 27,000 megawatts.

OptiSolar vice-president Peter Carrie, who said Sarnia was chosen because it is one of Ontario’s sunniest areas, conceded solar power is expensive now but predicted its costs will decline as the technology improves.

"We’re at the stage with solar where over the next five to 10 years the cost will be dramatically lower than they are now," he said.

The McGuinty government’s electricity sustainability plan calls for 15,700 megawatts of installed renewable power by 2025. Currently, about 7,900 megawatts are already online through existing hydroelectric, wind and other projects and an additional 1,700 megawatts are either already being produced or in development.

Conservative Leader John Tory says solar power has to be part of the supply mix but it’s not the answer to Ontario’s electricity generating needs.

"We still need to look after the base load power, which is why I suggested we’re going to have to honest with people and say probably more nuclear is going to be necessary."

Tory has not indicated how many new nuclear stations he believes will be required. The Liberal plan calls for the construction of 1,000 megawatts of new nuclear generation – one or two units depending on their size – at an existing nuclear site.

NDP legislature member Peter Tabuns said that while he welcomes the announcement of the OptiSolar project "the thing people have to keep in mind is that ultimately this is a government that is going to go nuclear.

"It is going to make announcements about these smaller projects to make it look as though it is green."

The NDP argues additional construction of nuclear plants could be avoided if the government did more to encourage conservation and energy efficiency.

Tom Adams of the energy watchdog group Energy Probe, noted that even though 42 cent is as much as seven times higher than the current price of power (it has averaged 5.4 cents per kilowatt hour since January), the amount of power involved is so small relative to the total that it won’t have a huge impact on electricity bills in the short term.

"But when you add it to all of the other things that are going on, it’s very clear that this is setting us on the path toward substantially higher electricity prices," he said, noting government is paying 11 cents per kilowatt hour for wind generation and is committed to paying as much as 7.1 cents per kilowatt hour for power generated by the Bruce nuclear station. Electricity generated by existing coal, hydro and the nuclear power plants run by Ontario Power Generation are significantly less.