The Swedish retail giant IKEA announced yesterday it will invest $4.6-million to install 3,790 solar panels on three Toronto area stores, giving IKEA the electric-power-producing capacity of 960,000 kilowatt hours (kWh) per year. According to IKEA, that’s enough electricity to power 100 homes. Amazing development. Even more amazing is the economics of this project. Under the Ontario government’s feed-in-tariff solar power scheme, IKEA will receive 71.3¢ for each kilowatt of power produced, which works out to about $6,800 a year for each of the 100 hypothetical homes. Since the average Toronto home currently pays about $1,200 for the same quantity of electricity, that implies that IKEA is being overpaid by $5,400 per home equivalent.
… but it feels so good.
Update: Ontario Proles Grow Restless over Green
ht: John
On the other hand the panels will produce a small percentage of the hypothetical amount of power generated.
Highway robbery. Anyone with a brain cell knows full well that the “subsidy” is coming directly out of the pockets of the consumers and taxpayers.
Last week, with much fanfare, “the world’s largest solar farm” officially opened in our community. The very next day, my next-door neighbour, a licenced electrican who worked on getting this up and running, was laid -off indefinitely.
So much for McGuinty’s “sustainable green jobs”.
It’s all a sham-a very evil and costly one.
Greening the economy….
Yes but what we had in mind, was not laying sod over the economy’s funeral!
Cheers
Hans-Christian Georg Rupprecht, Commander in Chief
1st Saint Nicolaas Army
Army Group “True North”
It’s green math alright… dollar green.
Feed In Tariffs are going to kill the Ontario economy. Any time you pay 71.3 cents for something that can be produced for 3 cents elsewhere, you are just economic grave digging.
Dulton doesn’t have the guts to put the tariff costs on the Hydro Bills, he plans to bury the payments out of general revenues.
But that means less money available for roads, schools, hospitals . . things people want.
If Ontario taxpayers are lucky, they will have a lot of cloudy weather so those panels won’t work.
Actually, from a straight arithmetic point of view, this seems to be a fairly well written story.
976 MWh /250 sunny days = 3904 kWh per day
3904 kWh/3790 panels = 1.03 kWh per panel per day
Average of 5 hours of usable sunlight per day = 200 W per panel.
That honestly sounds within the bounds of reason, so some of the other comments casting doubt on how much energy the panels will produce should be taken with a grain of salt. Also, the panels will produce peak output exactly when it is needed – on hot blazing July/August afternoons, when the A/C is humming, and Ontario has to buy power from elsewhere.
All that said, everything else about this deal stinks. It’s a blatant transfer of cash from poor consumers, struggling to pay their taxes and their energy bills, to a rich company that happens to have lots of rooftop real estate available. It makes no economic sense on any level, which is doubtless why the grade school teacher approves of it.
We are on a treadmill to ruin! The useful idiots in the Ontario government are traitors and ought to be treated as such.
*
hey… let’s hook elizabeth may up to a power-generating treadmill
in the lobby of parliament… it simultaneously ratchets down the
silly ass eco-rhetoric… and works off some of her avoirdupois.
win, win.
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Last time I looked the wholesale price of electricity in Ontario was 3.7 cents per kwh. The price being offered for solar is then almost twenty times the going rate. last summer the wholesale price for electricity was negative!! In other words if you don’t want to incur the costs of shutting down and restarting your reactor (which is a several day process) you can pay us to continue sending power to the grid.
I don’t think greenies get math at all. People are freaking out already because their electricity bill is going up 8 percent because of HST. I would love to see the reaction when it goes up from 100$ a month to 2000$ a month.
Someone once told me that some people in Ontario have electric furnaces to heat their homes.
Can anyone here confirm the truth of that rumour?
Cheers to Cjunk!
Another Liberal idea from the Liberal capital of Canada!! Unless of course you’re on the take.
Solar panels don’t work in the dark, nor do they last indefinately. If the panels cost 4.6 million today, they’ll cost 9.2 million to replace. By then power will have doubled. So the losses will be doubled.
If that money was used wisely–in ten years from now–we’d have reactors that use coke cans to produce 1.21 gigawatts of electricity like Dr. Brown’s “Flux Capacitor” in “Back to the future!”
KevinB
Without knowing anything much about Ontario weather and the size efficiency and placement of the panels, your estimate does sound optimistic to me.
There is also a problem with you saying that “the panels will produce peak output exactly when it is needed – on hot blazing July/August afternoons, when the A/C is humming, and Ontario has to buy power from elsewhere.” while minuteman claims that “last summer the wholesale price for electricity was negative!!” which would surely indicate that there is an oversupply in electricity at this time.
Two further points:
1. How do they factor in the extra costs of conventional power production when the power stations are no longer required to run all day?
2. Are they going to adopt the Spanish technology to produce solar power at night aka hooking up diesel generators to the feed lines?
Cheers to Cjunk!
Another Liberal idea from the Liberal capital of Canada!! Unless of course you’re on the take.
Solar panels don’t work in the dark, nor do they last indefinately. If the panels cost 4.6 million today, they’ll cost 9.2 million to replace. By then power will have doubled. So the losses will be doubled.
If that money was used wisely–in ten years from now–we’d have reactors that use coke cans to produce 1.21 gigawatts of electricity like Dr. Brown’s “Flux Capacitor” in “Back to the future!”
“2. Are they going to adopt the Spanish technology to produce solar power at night aka hooking up diesel generators to the feed lines?”
If they don’t, they’re crazy. Its a situation that fairly screams “Scam us! Please, we’re begging you!”
But I was thinking they could just plug the solar panels into a handy wall socket and avoid the cost of the generator completely. Can you see the inspector, “Hey, where does this extension cord go to?”
Let’s see, in Vermont, due to our nuclear plant, it is 8 cents a kilowatt hour.
8 cents a KWH and since it was complete, the main emissions are those of the workers commuting.
Oz asks: “Someone once told me that some people in Ontario have electric furnaces to heat their homes.
Can anyone here confirm the truth of that rumour?”
I took one of those out of Chez Phantom last fall and installed a new propane furnace instead. Only ran the electric for one winter, it was -expensive-.
Thank you for the answer Phantom.
Did/do many of your neigbours have them too?
Are they at all common in Ontario?
Seems mostly to be a marketing ploy designed to impress the pinkos that shop at Ikea – all at the taxpayers expense.
Those who say the calculations are sound need to learn a little more about solar panels.
If you like that, you’ll like this even more…in this case we also get to pay for the panels….wunderbar…..
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/technology/Schools+turn+solar+power+grant+into+windfall/3497748/story.html
It’s unlikely that this would be an ongoing project. I imagine that the idea behind this is to provide incentive to set up systems like this to help move people from an oil economy to the solar economy.
Of course, the author would have to do something like ask some questions as to why this is the amount paid, but then he might get a logical answer, and we can’t have that, can we?
IKEA is not as clever as they think. The Spaniards figured out a way to produce solar power at night.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-04-12/spanish-solar-panel-trade-group-calls-for-fraud-investigation.html
I hope they have as much fun assembling their solar panels as much as I have assembling their #$@%^^! furniture!
I always chuckle at comments like this “from an oil economy to the solar economy.”
Oil exists because of solar energy.
I imagine that the idea behind this is to provide incentive to set up systems like this to help move people from an oil economy to the solar economy.
And what, pray tell, might you envision the “solar economy” to be? Electricity for a few hours a day on days when it’s not cloudy?
Of course, you would have to ask questions like “how feasible is solar power”, but then you might get a logical answer, and you can’t have that, can you?
How can I get in on some of that action? Even if I’m not a Liberal?
To make up the money paid to IKEA to promote itself as a carbon-free zone, Ontario consumers and industries are on their way to experiencing the highest electricity rates in North America, if not most of the world.”
well that explains the rate increases. I thought it was basic good olde capitalist privatized greed. just change the letter ‘d’ to an ‘n’ aaaaaaand we get …. green!!!
I feel um, ‘sort of’ fortunate; I just started the 2nd yr of a 5 yr flat rate contract. ‘smart’ meters and ‘green’ based rate increases are not affecting me now and perhaps the next provincial gubbamint will move in on a platform of capping lowering the rates.
we live in interesting tymes….
Save the planet? Try manufacturing a stick-on wall hook that doesn’t snap, you smug Scandi b@st@rds.
Oz, depending on where you live, there are lots of electrically heated homes. For example, during the 70’s when electricity was relatively cheap,new home construction in areas serviced by nuclear power were heated by electricity, much the same a water heaters were. Areas in South Western Ontario near the Bruce nuclear power complex is a prime example.There were no furnaces involved. it was all radiant heat delivered through radiators.
All you have to do is partner up and feed in electricity from the house next door and presto,instant money!
How long before that starts to happen?
Re: “Someone once told me that some people in Ontario have electric furnaces to heat their homes.
Can anyone here confirm the truth of that rumour?”
Oz: Very few people use electricity any more. As Atric said, this was somewhat common in the 60’s and maybe early 70’s but electricity started to climb in price and electric heating became more expensive than gas. Some of the homes in our Toronto neighbourhood had electric baseboard heating – difficult to convert that to an alternative (which is usually forced air). Another disadvantage was the inability to install central air conditioning.
Homes that had air heat pumps installed usually had an electric furnace as a back-up for very cold winter days when the heat pump was useless. Almost all of the new homes (in Ontario anyway) use natural gas for heat.
Oz
Re…electric furnaces/heating….in Ontario….
The house next do had one installed a while back…likely a grant involved.
Seemed like a good idea…100% efficiency…no chimney….till the price of electricity went up….then the old boy hooked up an old wood stove to then not-so redundant chimney.
His daughter, the new occupant, quickly replaced the old annex stove with an air-tight and left the door open to the basement.
This summer the electric furnace was riped out and replaced by a NG furnace….also the electric water heater switched for gas. The deal was free hookup….problem it’s getting colder and the gas has not been hookup yet…..
I put 2 racks of wood beside her house….1 cord.
I heat with wood and my 60 gal water heater has 2″ of foam sprayed on and has the bottom element disconnected.
There is new “smart meter” out on the post but currently it is treated as a dumb meter(they still come about each quarter and read it).
Hydro One has a set up where on a specific day you can phone in your reading—to avoid them grossly “estimating” your reading.
My hydro bill lists hydro @$.065/kw—-14.04
But the bill with delivery etc $.2793 = $60.34 for 27 days….
Part of this after “adjusting” the metered 198kwh to 216kwh(109%)….line loss???
Wait till the ecofascists make public grid electricity more expensive than just buying a Honda generator and pouring some regular into it.
Anyone needing a little “common sense” on what is involved changing from carbon energy to solar and wind needs to read this:
http://www.questar.com/1OurCompany/newsreleases/2009_news/UVUSpeech.pdf
It’s pretty informative and down to earth. Send a copy to your MLA or MPP.
Thank you atric, John B, and sasquatch for the information.
I guess with the new solar farm Onatarians are going to go back to electric then?
Can’t use that nasty CO2 producing natural gas can they?
8^)
So- the answer to an already wonky system is to make it more pricey and inefficient?
If you think the Veterans Affairs brou-ha-ha has some political life, then do what I do and make an effort to contrast the scale of that, to the scale of the global warming climate change scam that permeates all levels of government and the civil service, and academia and the media to boot.
What’s more troubling, the bad treatment of a few hundred veterans, or the systematic over-taxing of the entire population of the country (including all veterans) on their electricity bills, through carbon taxes (especially in BC) and through disguised carbon taxes being marketed as user fees and HST? And who benefits? I think we all have a Strong idea on that.
Yes, invading the privacy of veterans for political reasons is a bad thing. But laying this total scam on the people of the free world to pay off a small cartel of con artists is far worse, and the media need to hear this every time they raise one of their pet issues (the whole political class is implicated in these real scandals, not just the current federal government).
Hey…where are all the trolls lately? My guess is that their heads are spinning from the AVALANCHE of colossal leftist cockups and exposed scams we’re hearing about, and can’t think of a single damned thing to say in their defense.
I’m starting the weekend with a big smile on my face.
Clearly the centre of the universe is Not “Have-Not” enough
The math is mind bending, I don’t blame the people who make money off a system, I blame the people in charge of the system.
Ontario is making things up as they go along. Every day there is a new announcement, backtrack, readjustment.
Even Parker Gallant is challenging the OPA because they have failed to perform under their licence from the Ontario Energy Board.
My life revolves around fighting giant stinking fans. My local MPP is so ‘mystified’ by community anger that he no longer lives at home. We have had so many damn public meetings people are totally confused (by design) No matter, 400+ people always show up. From a population of 2000, and McGuinty calls us a “tiny few”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLsEFVHXTpk
October 2011 is not that far away.
Good video, John.
I even improved my opinion of Ontarians a little.
Oz, the next meeting is next week. I have it on good authority there will be no chairs. You can guess why. LOL.
I have a lot of footage from the meetings. It is always difficult to decide what should go public and what might actually hurt the cause. Like the footage of a neighbour at the meeting giving the Nazi salute to the moderator as he left the meeting. Funnier than hell at the time but questionably appropriate now.
When I recently returned from vacation, I had a card in my mailbox from the local power company. They couldn’t read the meter because the gate was locked. They insisted I read the meter and submit the numbers. I called and told them the template on the card bore no resemblance to my meter.They were dumbfounded until I told them they had installed a smart meter and I presumed that, because it was so smart, they could read it via their computer. I was told that was not possible and they didn’t know when it would be “up and running”. That just confirmed my suspicion that it would never happen. This whole idea is a sick
joke.
Oh,and KevinB, Ontario has not been required to purchase electricity for several years.The economy has been so decimated by the McGuinty government that there is an excess, even though
coal-fired facilities have been shuttered.
Sorry for the lenghty post but this issue burns my sorry Ontario ass. Big time.
The f-word here:
“It was a fraud on a scale I have never seen, and I lack the words to describe its enormity.”
(H/T Mao Stlong, say … (Mao Stlong is Liberal Bob Rae’s … Mo.)
…-
“This is an important moment in science history. I would describe it as a letter on the scale of Martin Luther, nailing his 95 theses to the Wittenburg church door. It is worthy of repeating this letter in entirety on every blog that discusses science. – Anthony”
“Hal Lewis: My Resignation From The American Physical Society – an important moment in science history”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/
Ontario has far more energy today than it know what to do with. Currently we have about 33,500 Mw of capacity in the province. Due to the flight of manufacturing from the economic downturn, we rarely us more than 25000 Mw on the hottest sunny day.
Over the past few months, nuclear has climbed from about 60% to over 80%. This is mostly the result of significant capacity increases at Bruce, where the government is committed to purchase all energy produced at $48/Mw whether it is fed to the grid or not.
Solar is a bit player, always has, alway will be.
The increase in nuclear is what has allowed Ontario to shut down coal plants. Most of this was accomplished in August. August was a hot windless month: Ontario has 1100 Mw of wind capacity which, during August 2010, produced at .4%
September was a very windy month. Some days in September 2010 have seen hours of 1000 Mw of wind energy. But overall demand was down to 20000 Mw. So we continue to pay $135/Mw to wind whether we need it or not.
When wind capacity gets to 5000 Mw, we are committed to pay producers $135/Mw to not produce anything.
In addition to the wind energy, we are keeping generators at Lampton and Naticoke running 24/7 to balance wind inability to match the daily cycle demand. We even get to sell this excess baseload overnight to Michigan and New York at a “who knows” discount pricing.
On top of all this, McGuinty’s promise of green jobs will require him to turn the coal generators back on to support his green energy vision.
76% of all Ontarians have decided it is time for a change. Duh! Rob Ford is just the (pretty big) tip of an iceberg.
Sorry for the rant.
My solution to TOU pricing: you won’t believe what I can cook on a BBQ. Mac & Cheese, mmmmm.
How does it feel Canada to know your not free anymore? That some small niggling bureaucrat, has more control of your life, home & wife than you do?
How is the cold gruel of tyranny you now eat compare to the cup of liberty you once drunk in joy? This is what happens when you let people with pieces of paper pretend their infallible. You become the slaves of the political fads of functionary morons.
JMO
I have a prediction to make:
Once upon a time, in Ontario, we had a utility known as Ontario Hydro. It went busted. I know that to be true because,every month there is a special charge on the electric bill for debt retirement from that collapse. With some luck maybe in 2017 that special charge will end.
This whole crock-of-shit solar and wind is financially unsustainable. There is only one possible outcome.
My prediction: Again the utility will go belly-up.
All the sheep, that think they can’t lose, that have invested in solar panels, wind, manure digesters will learn a very hard economic lesson when they are stuck paying for “hardware” to produce electricity and a consumer that can’t afford to buy it.
A footnote to OZ:
It is very, very common to find 1970’s & 80’s constructed homes with baseboard electric heaters as the primary heat source throughout the whole province.
Liberal Ontario
“We insist the country goes green and that the Canadian people will take in the Third World”!!!
“Just not in our backyards or with our money”.
A thought about a comment above. What is to stop Daryll from applying to sell power to the grid at a price 20 times higher than what it costs for his neighbour Daryll to purchase that power of the grid and send it to Daryll’s place to sell back? They then split the profit. Does this sound like perpetual motion?
I really think that the best way forward for Ontario and all of Canada for that matter is for the market to be allowed to produce energy in an economically efficient manner.
That would be the only fair way forward.