Huge Interest in Ontario's Proposed Renewable Energy Feed-in Tariff Program

Could Theoretically Generate 20% of Ontario's Electricity

April 22, 2009

The Ontario Power Authority (OPA) says there is a huge amount of interest in their proposed feed-in tariff program. OPA quietly posted the results of a survey on its web site earlier this week. See Renewable Energy Supply Survey Results

The survey of those interested in developing solar, wind, hydro, and biomass resources under the province's potentially groundbreaking program revealed that there's as much as 15,000 MW of interest.

Interest is not the same as a contract to construct, but it does indicate the level of potential renewable energy development in the province.

If all 15,000 MW were constructed, they could generate as much as 30 TWh (billion kWh) per year, that's equivalent to 20% of Ontario's current consumption of electricity.

The OPA is the provincial agency that would be charge with implementing renewable energy feed-in tariffs if Ontario passes the Green Energy and Green Economy Act currently moving through the provincial parliament.

According to the OPA, they "received responses from approximately 150 developers representing 381 projects under various stages of development. The survey results indicated a potential of 15,128MW of renewable energy supply, this figure also includes information gathered from recent OPA procurement initiatives. This level of interest highlights the significant need for new transmission and distribution infrastructure investments to bring potential new supply onto the grid."

Summary

• 46 Projects between 10 kW to 999 kW (16 MW in total)
• 220 Projects between 1 MW to 10 MW (1,641 MW in total)
• 115 Projects between 10.1MW to 600 MW (13,470 MW in total)

In other Ontario developments, Scotia Bank issued an industry report on Ontario's proposed feed-in tariffs. The report said that OPA's proposed tariffs "look reasonable, and for the most part, they are. Pre-tax unlevered equity returns range from 9.2% for ground-mounted solar PV to 11.2% for biomass power."

Scotia suggested that to stimulate the type of growth envisioned by the Ontario goverment it may be nessary "offer pre-tax unlevered equity returns closer to the 12% area. This would imply an onshore wind power price of $0.144 CAD/kWh (proposed at $0.135 CAD/kWh) and a hydro price of $0.137 CAD/kWh (proposed at $0.129 CAD/kWh)."

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