Ontario's Independent Electricity Systems Operator (IESO) has awarded 140 MW-AC of solar PV among 455 MW-AC of renewable energy overall in its latest auction for large-scale renewable energy projects.
The biggest solar winners in this round of the Large Renewable Procurement (LRP) program are BluEarth Renewables, which has been awarded a contract for its 54 MW-AC Loyalist Solar project in Lennox and Addington County, and SunEdison, which will build a 44 MW-AC solar project in Haldimand County. BluEarth expects to being construction of the Loyalist Project in 2017, and for the plant to be operational in 2018.
Other developers who won solar project contracts include:
- EDF – 22 MW-AC in two projects
- Sky Solar – 12 MW
- Invenergy – 6.7 MW
- Skypower – 1.4 MW
Among the 455 MW-AC of renewable energy projects awarded, 2/3 of the capacity went to wind projects. IESO notes that more than 80% include participation from one or more First Nations communities, including five with more than 50% participation.
The LRP is Ontarios new process for awarding large-scale renewable energy projects, and replaced the provinces feed-in tariff for projects above 500 kW in 2013. As explored in an article in the February edition of pv magazine Canadian Solar has estimated that the latest round of the LRP was 12 1/2 times oversubscribed.
Canadian Solar has also described LRP pricing as very competitive. The average price for solar projects in this round came in at around CA$160 (US$120) per megawatt-hour, within a range of CA$141-$178 (US$107-$135)
Correction: This article was corrected at on March 14 at 8:50 AM EST (U.S.) time. The original version of this article listed prices for these projects that were off by a factor of 10 – a price of CA$141 was listed as CA$14.15. We have changed all of the prices to the correct figures.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.