Solar Power Beginning to Shine

Sadly, this means I can no longer dazzle at dinner parties with tales of my own beloved panels (really, you don’t want to let me get started…), but the planet must be smiling as solar busts out of its micro-niche.

Not only are panels sprouting on individual rooftops – aided by some amazing grassroots organizing efforts – but we’re also seeing contracts being signed for huge solar plants south of the border, rivaling the sizes of nuclear reactors.

To give you a sense of how things have changed over the last couple of years, Ontario’s still-under-development electricity plan initially called for a measly 40 megawatts of solar power over the next 20 years. Yet through the province’s (brilliant) Standard Offer Program, and much to the surprise of old-school industry experts, there are already 177 separate contracts signed for a total of 407 megawatts of solar power. And we’re just getting started – so if you live in a province without a decent solar program, ask your government why that is.

This month’s cover story in Canadian Geographic has a great synopsis of how all this has come together: public desire for climate solutions they can implement at home, technology improvements bringing down prices, some smart policy, and the always-required people who just won’t take no for an answer to bring it all together.

Of course you can’t run an inefficient energy system on solar panels and windmills, which is why energy efficiency and conservation have to come first, but solar is no longer the domain of dreamers and the back-to-the-land crowd. And once you get panels, I suspect you’ll be thinking about how you can make that precious power go further.

by Keith Stewart