On Thursday March 12, the OPA announced their proposed pricing for the new Feed-In Tariff program which would almost double the price paid to rooftop generators under the RESOP program.  While this does not represent a final decision on tariff levels, the announcement kicks off an eight week review process with the program likely not launching until this summer, it is the strongest indication to date that the OPA is serious about making rooftop solar profitable in Ontario. 

Unlike the RESOP program that paid solar PV generators 42 cents/kWh for any projects capable of generating up to 10 MW of power, the new Feed-In Tariff program, like its succesful counterparts in Europe, offers a multi-tiered pricing regime based on project size.  The reasoning behind this is that different solar applications, say a 2 kW rooftop array and a 5 MW ground-based solar farm, have differing abilities to capture scale benefits and since the government is keen to support various PV projects, higher rates must be offered to smaller generators in order to make the projects economically attractive.  The following figure shows the proposed tariff levels and prices.

(Adapted from the OPA website)

More information on the Feed-In Tariff program and the proposed rates for other technologies are also availalble on the OPA website.

This exciting news could drastically improve the economics of rooftop PV projects which the province now understands as necessary to reach its goal of 100 000 solar rooftops.  Our Power is looking forward to working with communities interested in taking advantage of this new incentive.

An excellent article by the Toronto Star's Tyler Hamilton gives more details.