Home Solar Panels - is it time?

11/19/13 - Are residential solar panel roofs viable today?

The OPA MicroFIT site indicates a much lower rate (effective Jan 1,2014, for any new requests not approved before Aug 26, 2013) for the roof top Feed-in Tariff.
The 2014 rates are $.396 (less than 10kW) to $.329 (greater than 100 kW). 
The 2013 rates were $.549 (less than 10kW) to $.539 (greater than 100kW).
The 2011 rates were $.802 (less than 10kW to $.539 (greater than 500kW).

As you can see, the price per kW is dropping every year now ... and much less range in price between 10 and 100 kW.

The microFIT rules (version 3) have been altered as well and you will need to discuss these details with a qualified Ontario installer.

Here is an analysis of installation cost and ROI from back in 2011.

Here is blog of an installation in Vaughan in 2012. Good details. Hopefully, design has changed since then, as I am not impressed with the look.

Here is the OPA microFIT questions and answers site.

Lots to consider....


10/17/10 - I have been watching home installation costs for solar panels for some time now.

Back in January, i added an item to this blog about residential solar panels.

Also, a while ago, i had read the price of solar panels was decreasing due to a very large supply.

I am also aware of the price of $.802 per kilowatt hour for the FIT (Feed-in Tariff) pgm. This rate is guaranteed for 20 years!
Is it any surprise it is very difficult to be accepted by the OPA (Ontario Power Authority) for this pgm???

There are, according to this article (The Toronto Star - Oct 16th), approx 23.000 applicants for this project totalling approx 15,000 megawatts of capacity ... but only 15% have been approved to-date. Are you surprised?


The folks in this article spent approx $42k to place the panels on their large roof (27 panels).


Stay tuned. As the situations improves, i will update this item.


Hopefully, i will be able to install and feed the grid ... before i am so old i forget the value of this project...


BTW, if Vaughan is reviewing this article, i would be interested in the Australian perspective.