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...

US residential PV market adoption In his keynote address at PV American yesterday, the Solar Energy Industry Association’s Rhone Resch observed that Solar is now the number one growth industry in the United States. Market data from the DOE’s Tracking the Sun III backs him up. Released at the end of 2010, this DOE report reveals that between 2002 and 2009 the residential solar PV market alone grew tenfold. The residential market...

Energy Security Reminder - Roadblocks at LAX A recent study of load profiles, rate structures and solar insolation for the three major California utilities underscores the beneficial match of PV generation and load demand.  Time of Use rates can stimulate faster adoption of PV systems that will offset peak demand.  Leveraging Time of Use rates, solar PV customers can benefit from higher economic returns and faster payback on their...

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)...

California - Palm Trees and Solar Forests Just four years in, the California Solar Initiative (CSI) is racing ahead of its plan. The CSI PV program is already half subscribed and accelerating.   If this pace continues, the CSI PV program could be fully subscribed almost four years ahead of schedule.   Reservations now at Step 8 of 10   Originally conceived as a ten year project, with ten discrete steps, most CSI service territories...

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,...