Ontario Power Authority FIT and microFIT Program Stats and the Price of Electricity

The Ontario Power Authority FIT and microFIT program application statistics [pdf] are updated every two weeks and posted on their website. This website has a wealth of information on it, and people interested in the details of the programs and in renewable electric energy development will find much valuable information on that site.
However, to begin to understand [?possible?] the electricity demand, supply, and the price you also need to know information from the IESO.
I am going to do a little exercise here to show what the current microFIT program electricty is supplying to the provincial grid and what it is costing. I summarizing things with many assumptions.
Solar data :

• uFIT* stats
• Total applications = 30,168 [276 MW, or 9.15 kW project average size]
• Applications terminated [ineligible, no grid connection, etc] = 3,049 [10%! 29 MW, 9.5 avg size so proportionally it is the bigger uFIT projects and most likely in rural areas that are having more difficulty connecting to gird]
• Conditional offers = 21,255 [193 MW, 9.1 kW avg size. OPA has made progress processing applications]
• Contracts executed = 5,093 [44 MW, 8.64 kW avg size]
• 16.9% of applications to the uFIT program are actually connected under contract. This suggests it has been slow to get to the contract stage with the OPA and it is taking the solar installation companies quite a long time to get their clients' projects installed and connected.
• 3.0 to 3.5 hours per day per kW of installed panel capacity is general average output of the panels
• 3.0 is a more conservative estimate, some salesmen use 3.5, sun-orienting tracking systems may be higher
• 2.61 hours per day per kW is my system's current average for the first 3/4 of a year as of 3 June
• 99.9% of the uFIT applications are solar PV
• uFIT PV power receives $0.802/kWhr
• 132,000 kWhr/day = 3.0 hrs/day . 44,000 kW, or 
• $105,864/day = 132,000 kWhr/day . $0.802kWhr

So, Ontario's ratepayers, including business and industry, are paying $105,864 per day for the electricty they get from the 5,000+ small solar systems.

IESO electricty data:

• IESO market update
• 90 days from 1 Jan to 31 March
• 37,430 GWhrs over 90 days, or 415.9 GWhrs/day [415,889 MWhrs/day]
• $0.0328/kWhr average price over this period [uFIT price $0.77 higher than market rate]
• $13,441,159/day = 415,889 MWhr/day . $0.0328kWhr . 1,000 kW/1MW

 Therefore, info about Ontario small solar PV systems:

• 0.03174% of our electricity is coming from uFIT projects
• 0.776% of the electricity cost is coming from uFIT projects, even less if you consider the new pricing set out by the Ontario Energy Board 

Please let me know if I've done a miscalculation.
* = uFIT short for microFIT, I can't type the Greek character mu, so I use "u" instead. A throwback to my bioclimatology modelling days where mu was commonly used to denote "micro". A bit of a misnomer when micro means 1x10^-6 whereas a large FIT project is 1x10^4 kW and a microFIT project is 10 kW.

May 2011 Cumulative

December and January could be a bad memory when you have grid-tied solar panels. But you need to have the long-term view. Even with the dreary May weather, the microFIT program is working out. At this point it is still too early to say what the ideal price is to achieve a reasonable return on investment. We are roughly 3/4 through the year and we are nearly equal to our loan payment [10 yr amortization]. However we are going into the long summer days and will more than exceed the loan. But that is only reasonable - many businesses require a 3 year return on investment so why shouldn't a homeowner have their own small solar business on their roof and get 7-10 year return on investment?
I show the cumulative revenue below.

The blue revenue curve is the daily generation from 24 August 2010 to 3 June 2011. I've discussed the low generation in earlier posts, but here we see there are enough sunny days that we are catching up to the cumulative loan. The net revenue was higher from August to December where it dropped below the loan payment. However, we now how enough data to see the growth in revenue that started in February has allowed the system to virtually catch up to the cumulative loan payments. On 3 June loan payments was $3043 and generated power was $2900. However, we should be expecting a cheque from Guelph Hydro soon - payments received to date have been $1762.