World Powers Pressure Ontario Agenda Last week the US and the EU both took formal action against Ontario’s Feed-in-Tariff Domestic Content Provisions. In the case of solar projects, these Domestic Content requirements are set to increase to 60% in 2011. Last week’s news foreshadows this week’s sold out Ontario Feed-In-Tariff (FIT) Supply Chain Forum being held in Toronto October 5th and 6th at the Allstream Centre....

Light Bulb Change by Committee With just over a year left until the Ontario Solar Feed-In-Tariff (FIT) program expires, there were two significant announcements yesterday that have significant implications for how the program operates.  While that news was breaking, however, there has been no update on how many of the approximately 11,000 pending solar ground-mount applications affected by the recent tariff cut had re-applied by the...

The Solar Universe is Small The Ontario Power Authority (OPA) shocked the nascent Ontario PV industry on July 2 with plans to cut the tariff rate on small solar PV ground-mount systems by 27%, from 80.2 ¢/kWh to 58.8 ¢/kWh.     New Eligibility Criteria   Yesterday, August 25, as a follow-up to the finalized rate changes announced on August 13, the OPA provided a series of documents outlining New criteria developed to better define...

On Friday the 13th the Ontario Power Authority (OPA) finalized its Feed-In-Tariff (FIT) rate for small Photovoltaic (PV) solar ground-mount systems at 64.2 ¢/kWh, down from the original 80.2 ¢/kWh. In so doing, the OPA conceded ground on its original proposal to cut rates to 58.8 ¢/kWh.  Perhaps more significantly, the OPA reversed itself and will not force this rate change retroactively on the roughly 11,000 pending ground-mount...

The d-bits blog is now over one month old. Launched foolishly while boarding an airplane, there has been considerable compressed learning.  Thus far, I am more or less on track with my goals:  Discuss solar and general cleantech issues Write original copy, interest others in contributing Use original pictures Surprisingly, getting quality pictures that mesh with the content has turned out to be one of the bigger challenges.  As I...