Ontario has, for the last 2years, implemented a subsidized renewable energy program in Ontario.
It is based on a very successful pay-for-energy-produced program that has been running in Germany for years
Short sighted nay-sayers have criticized the program because the prices being to participants is much higher than current market value from our formerly-government-owned electricity generating monopoly (OPG). 80 cents/kW-hr for rooftop solar
The original purpose of the program was to offer an incentive to the average property owner that would be attractive enough to actual make people want to pay to install renewable energy systems. It is also geared towards using wasted rooftop spaces instead of covering prime farmland by solar farms, thus the difference in rooftop vs. ground-mount prices.
Renewable energy systems in Canada, because of its high cost has always been a cottage industry, only purchased by the very well-off or hard-core greenies.
We have seen in the last two years that the program has been running a drop in the price of solar panels by 70%. Two years ago a 200W solar panel cost between $800-1000. Now, after two years of record sales and development in sales and installation chains, the price of a similar solar panel is around $300.
We are seeing a classic example of a supply-and-demand economic model at work. It starts to snowball rapidly. The more volume that a manufacturer sells, the more they can streamline their process and the more the cost-per-unit comes down. Cheaper prices encourages more people to buy the product, and the cycle continues. The FIT program has also had the fore-sight to include a minimum domestic content rule to force manufacturers and installers to move operations to Ontario, creating jobs and bolstering the economy.
Once the industry has had the chance to mature the incentive prices will start to be reduced to reflect the reduced system costs, eventually being completely phased out.
The OPA FIT program is one of the few things a government has done correctly in a long time.
It is working so well that Nova Scotia and Alberta are copying their own programs from the FIT program in Ontario.
