Canada Launches Largest Solar Research Park
The University of Toronto (U of T), ARISE Technologies and the Portlands Energy Centre (PEC) have joined forces to create Canada’s largest solar research facility, which will be located on the PEC site on Toronto’s waterfront.
When completed, the facility will harvest enough solar energy to power up to 1,000 homes. The community will be able to participate through a community based share offering. Under the agreement, PEC will provide land worth about $2.4 million. ARISE will design and install a photo power system utilizing high efficiency photovoltaic (PV) cell technology developed by ARISE and U of T. The solar park will create between 500kW and 1MW, representing an investment between $5 to $8 million.
U of T students and staff at ARISE will use the facility to conduct research on renewable energy systems and technologies. This will help develop the utilization of PV systems for commercial and utility scale systems. The PEC site is an ideal location for this project as it’s an urban setting close to the university, has access to transmission lines and offers a large tract of land with an unobstructed southern exposure.
Later this year, ARISE will issue a community based share offering that will allow residents to participate in the project. Standard Offer Contract details with the Ontario Power Authority and government officials regarding permits have not been finalized. Details on the community share offering and exact size of the facility will be announced at a later date. The project is expected to be installed in late 2008 or early 2009.
“We’re thrilled to be part of this project and help create the path to a more sustainable future. We’re looking forward to working with ARISE and the students,” said Jim Burpee, PEC Chairman.
“This is an excellent opportunity for our students to get first hand exposure to commercial scale solar electric systems,” said Nazir Kherani, a Photovoltaics Professor at U of T. “In addition, the facility will provide a research venue for large scale, grid connected photovoltaic systems,” said Reza Iravani, an Energy Systems Professor at the University.
“We are very pleased to be involved with this and will use this project as a large scale deployment of our high efficiency PV cells. We expect that the cells used in modules for this project will be produced by one of our partner companies. This project will provide an opportunity for our systems group to study and optimize implementation of large scale systems for deployment in Ontario,” commented Ian MacLellan, President and CEO of ARISE.
