Charting out the Generation, Revenue, Expense of our PV System

I've cumulatively plotted out the revenue my PV system has generated over time as well as what I've paid on our load. I've also plotted out the microFIT payments I've received from Guelph Hydro. Note the following:

• revenue (blue) increases relatively over the spring and summer months and slows down over the winter
• our revenue was initaially greater than out payments, then over the first winter revenue was lower than the payments. The revenue overtook the loan payments in June 2011 and has been a net income ever since
• our net earnings to date have been approximately $8500-$7500=$1000
• the microFIT payments are lagging my loan payments - I've needed to keep a float in my account to cover the delay of payments
• the time period between microFIT payments from Guelph Hydro is rather variable. The last payment in particular was delayed quite a bit and I had to put extra money in my account to cover the automatic withdrawal of the loan payments. Guelph Hydro told me they are implementing a new billing and payment system that will automate their payments. They told me they had now over 100 microFIT contracts connected in Guelph. It also tells me that Guelph Hydro is much more consistent in sending bills to me than wanting to pay me.

Revenue generated, loan expenses, and microFIT payments

Taxation of Properties with Solar PV System

The question of property tax changes after a PV systems in installed on your house has never really been clarified by the local or provincial governments. Adding a PV system to your home increases the value of it [assets and potential revenue]. Of course, some may disagree and prefer not to buy a house with panels.
I have not heard of any homeowner facing a property tax re-assessment. But there is good news, released 2 August 2011. The Ministry of Finance has released a proposed regulatory amendment to the Assessment Act to provide greater clarity and certainty to property owners, energy generators, municipalities and the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation regarding the property tax treatment of renewable energy facilities. The proposed policy would apply to electricity generation installations that utilize solar, wind, or anaerobic digestion.
In summary, for roof-top and ground-mounted small scale solar systems:

• Roof-top: The assessment and tax classification of property would not change due to the addition of a rooftop energy generation installation.
• Ground-mounted installations: the property tax treatment will depend upon the size of the facility as well as the entity who is doing the generation - Small-size ground installations (up to 10 kW) would not result in assessment increase or change in tax classification.
• Medium-size ground installations, with generation capacity over 10 kW up to 500 kW, would be taxed based on the surrounding land use (e.g. residential, farm, multi-residential, commercial).

Essentially, a house with a microFIT project would continue to be taxed as a house and not as a business. Also, the house would not be assessed to a higher tax rate due to an increased value.
This is great news - we had wondered all along if our property tax would increase due to our PV system. It would be disappointing if the government paid you to generate renewable energy then turn around and increase your taxes to claw back a part of that revenue. On a small PV system, even a couple hundred dollars would have a large impact on the financial viability of the project [see my recent post]. Secondly, this would act as a disincentive to produce renewable energy - something that is socially beneficial. Thirdly, I have never seen any information from the Ontario Power Authority to say the $0.802/kWhr accounted for increased taxation.
There is more details on wind and larger solar projects that I won't get into here. On Farm anaerobic digestion systems (even systems over 500 kW) are taxed at the farm rate.

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.

April 2011 Generation Results

The bright sunny days of March have led to rather dreary days of April. This has been very interesting results for our solar power generation. I don't think there was one day in April of totally bright cloud-free days, though I'll check that later. In the mean time I am posting my PV generation to date. Given that the next few days that end April will be very cloudy and wet, I don't expect anything interesting, so I post this a few days before then end of April.
However, a quick note about extremely windy days today and yesterday. There was unconfirmed tornadoes in Kitchener, 20 km to the west of us yesterday, and very strong gusts here in Guelph. Our panels are still on the roof - that's a good thing. I was very impressed that our solar system installer [Merlyn Power]  called this morning to see if we still had panels on our roof or if there was any damage. Very considerate and consciousness of him.
So, the results:

• the middle of March was spectacularly bright as you see in my 03 April post. This continued into early April but mid to end of April were relatively cloudy with lower kWhrs
• 20 April was only 5 kWhrs which was a very rainy and dark day
• cloudy with sunny periods was yielding about 15 kWhrs

 

Guelph Solar Blog

I wish to share my experience deciding to install a solar photovoltaic system on our house in Guelph, Ontario. We are contracted to sell our power through the Ontario Power Authority's microFIT program. We are now receiving $0.802/kWhr.

I will post why I decided to do this project, how I proceeded, and how it is working out. I will try to post information here that I think will be useful for others who wish to do solar PV, for people who want to learn more about it, and to hopefully encourage further development of solar PV in Guelph [and beyond].

Full disclosure: I am not a vendor of solar equipment or services. I will not be taking any money from anyone related to solar, etc. I am fully independent. I do work for the provincial government working in renewable energy, but not solar. I am approaching this as non-work related. I will avoid any opinion, just the facts [positive and negative]. I will disclose any conflicts of interest.
Despite a similar name, this blog is not associated in any way with SolarG nor Solar Guelph.