Ontario Legislative Building - the Pink Palace is seeing red Just a few weeks ago, Ontario’s Progressive Conservative Party was a no show at the Ontario Feed-In Tariff Forum. The Party provided a written statement instead of joining their political counterparts at the large gathering of industry executives. This Tuesday, however, the party leader spoke up and it is not good news. According to the Globe and Mail, “Ontario Progressive...

Toronto City Hall - PV Market Overshadowed by Politics The second Ontario Feed-In Tariff Supply Chain Forum was held in Toronto last week. While the Ontario FIT program is showing signs of success and maturation, there were plenty of concerns expressed and lots of candid dialog. In the run-up to this Forum, the Feed-In Tariff program was still going through fits (sic) and starts with connection issues, or the lack thereof, affecting all...

Toronto Horse Palace - Time to Hitch Up the Wagons The Ontario Feed-In-Tariff Supply Chain Forum, bringing together key executives from virtually all industry interest groups on April 19-20, is barely a month away. There will be lots to discuss.   Last week one of the leading solar industry analysts, Travis Bradford, observed that “Ontario has used every procedural trick in the book to slow down the (PV project approval)...

Ontario Power Authority Headquarters On Tuesday the Ontario Power Authority (OPA) expanded the Feed-In-Tariff (FIT) Program to allow formal participation of Commercial Aggregators. In so doing, the OPA has added another FIT rate class. More importantly, this move makes the microFIT program and its benefits more accessible to Ontario homeowners. When asked for comment on the change, Bernie Li, VP Finance and Co-Founder of PURE Energies,...

Toronto Wind Icon By Adrienne Baker, Director, Canadian Clean Energy Conferences  A year and a bit into its ambitious feed-in tariff program, Ontario’s renewable energy industries are growing steadily but political uncertainty and grid expansion plans remain top concerns for manufacturers and developers alike. Since the launch of the FIT program in October 2009, several big wind and solar manufacturers have announced plans to set up or...

 Attendance was way up for the Canadian Solar Industry Association’s (CanSIA) annual Solar Industry Conference last week in Toronto, and was at least double that of last year. Virtually all of the presentations were very upbeat. Major announcements at the Conference included MEMC’s new plans for Ontario-based module manufacturing as well as the launch of CanSIA’s Solar Vision 2025. The mood wasn’t all positive, however. Among...