First Solar and Enbridge have signed a deal for the Canadian energy company to buy a 20MW solar farm that the PV firm has developed and is building near Sarnia, Ontario. The project, which will be the largest PV installation in Canada when it's completed by the end of the year, is being built by First Solar under a fixed-price engineering, procurement, and construction contract and will use more than 370,000 of the company's CdTe thin-film modules.
via www.pv-tech.org
This marks the first utility-scale sized PV project built under the OPA's former RESOP program. Its great to see market leader First Solar being able to capitalize on the former program, something other developers with RESOP contracts (~560 MW worth) have as yet been unable to do.
The new OPA FiT rules are looking questionable at best. The province's local content rules are making the industry question whether any projects will be built with the current rules. In my opinion, if the government is serious about building renewable energy in the province, they need to lower the local content rules to allow more flexibility for developers to source product from the most economically-efficient suppliers.
But that's just my C0.02.
