New green business aims to assist area homeowners

Posted Feb 2, 2012 By Lorraine Payette

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EMC Business - With the advent of the new smart metres in everyone's homes, a new business has started in Gananoque to help people get a grip on their electricity costs, and maybe even make a little extra money in addition.

"I just recently began working with a company located in Windsor called Certified Solar," said Andrew Ray. "They are expanding into southeastern Ontario, and I am the distributor for their products and services in this region."

The Ontario government passed the Green Energy Act in 2009, allowing homeowners to produce their own green energy without having to go through an environmental impact assessment first. Prior to that, every personally owned wind generator, solar panel, or other green energy device was subject to a tedious protocol, making many homeowners give up in frustration. When added into the already prohibitive costs of installing a personal off-grid system or one that hooked into the existing services, the incentive for going green was less than nil.

However, under the new Act, small systems for personal use can be purchased and installed with no assessment required by the government. And it doesn't take anything massive to produce more power than the typical Canadian household requires. But what if there is an excess? Sell it back to the Ontario Power Authority.

"If you produce electricity with solar panels (either mounted on your roof, or as a stand-alone 'ground mount' system), the Ontario Power Authority will pay you up to $0.802 - that's 80.2 cents per kWh," said Ray. "Compare that to what you are paying now, and you will see it is far more lucrative to sell all the power you produce back to the grid, and continue buying the hydro you need - (at) somewhere in the region of $0.10 to $0.12 per kWh for your hydro, plus another $.010 or so for delivery, etc.

"Look at it this way. Let's say you had a dairy farm, and you produced ten gallons of milk per day, and your family used five gallons of milk per day with their meals. You could 'siphon off' some of the milk you produced to feed your family. But if a gallon of milk at the grocery store only costs $5, and the government is buying your milk for $40, doesn't it make more sense to sell all your milk to the government? This is in fact, really, truly, honestly what is happening in Ontario right now under the Green Energy Act, 2009."

The government has made a serious commitment to green energy for several reasons. One is that it is better for the environment. It also expects to save $3 billion in health care costs by reducing the use of coal and its harmful emissions. The province has realized that green systems are costly to build, and people cannot be expected to invest in them unless they get a fair return for what they are putting in.

Systems are not inexpensive. A full residential system costs between $40,000 and $100,000, whether mounted on the ground or on the roof.

"Various factors come into play that are unique to each situation," said Ray. "Certified Solar has put together a very attractive financing plan to allow most homeowners to take advantage of this."

Once the funding is in place and down payment received, Certified Solar goes to work "to engineer, manufacture, install, and get (the) solar photovoltaic system hooked to the grid."

All of the bureaucratic red tape is handled by Certified Solar.

Certified Solar projects that a typical 10 kW roof mounted system will generate an income of about $1,200 per month from the Ontario Power Authority. With loan repayments of $300-$500 per month, the client should net from $700-$900 per month.

"(The client) gets the entire amount of the HST paid on the system rebated to (them), the (earned) income is income tax free for the first 12 to 14 years, and the income earned is guaranteed by the Ontario government, in writing, for 20 years," said Ray. "(Clients) will have a 20-year, irrevocable contract with the Ontario Power Authority."

For more information, check out the company at www.certifiedsolar.ca .

"I will come to you, bring all the info, data, charts and graphs, and put together a no-cost proposal customized for your home," said Ray.




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