Summer is a favourite time of year for many, with vacation, pools, beaches, cottage country and spending time outside just a few of the many things we love about this season.
This time of year is also near and dear to those with solar panels. It’s the time of year when solar generation is at its peak and when Ontario’s electricity grid is at its most stressed (and carbon intensive) as people rely on air conditioning to keep comfortable.
As we mentioned in a previous post, Ontario’s electric grid is relatively clean compared to other jurisdictions, emitting on average 100 grams of CO2 per kWh. This means electricity consumption for the ERC was responsible for around 120 tonnes of CO2 in 2012. We’d like to reduce this to zero and one of the main ways to do that at our site is with solar photovoltaic generation.
We are an active participant in Ontario’s Feed-In-Tariff program, which provides an incentive for renewable power generation. Our two existing arrays generate power that is sold to the Ontario Power Authority for consumption in the local grid at a higher rate than grid supplied power. We recently applied to this program for an additional contract for solar generation on the rooftop of the Earth Rangers Centre main building. We were not successful in securing an additional contract, but we remain committed to investigating further generation as a means to reduce our on-going energy related costs and carbon footprint.
So, what about net metering? Net metering is off-setting your electricity use through on-site generation, without the incentive premium associated with a FIT contracted system. If you generate one unit of energy, that is one less unit of energy that you have to buy for from your local distribution company. Credits build up on your energy bill to be consumed during a period of less solar generation.
The economics are less appealing in this configuration, with simple paybacks ranging from 12-20+ years, but they are improving rapidly as the solar industry matures. A recent report from Lawrence Berkeley National Labs showed an average cost of $4.90 per watt of installed capacity for an array similar to our proposed design. (It’s a great report – read more here). This is less than half of what we paid in 2009 for our aviary array! Further savings in 2013 of 10-15% on top of this are already in evidence.
So what does this mean for our net-zero goal? An array of around 60kW will fit on our roof, generating approximately 66,000 kWh of electricity per year. This means that, in total, we would generate 35% of our annual energy consumption on-site. Additional energy conservation plans should improve that to 40%. As you can see, our goal of net-zero operation is by no means easily obtained but we’re still finding ways to save energy every day.
Check out our live generation data here and join us as we cheer every time the sun comes out.