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Solar Power
Individuals, farmers, food processors, and others have been investigating the opportunity to use solar photovoltaic equipment to generate clean, renewable energy under Ontario’s Renewable Energy Standard Offer Contract.
There are three main types of Solar PV Installations in Canada:
- Residential up to 10kW
- Farm / Food Processor – Commercial 10kW to 1MW
- Large Scale Commercial Over 1 MW
Most farm and food processor scale projects fall into the 10 kW to 1 MW size range.
At present economics are questionable due to the high price of photovoltaic on the world market
Advisory capacity is also short for medium sized solar installations as expertise often lies in the residential (due to high volume) and large commercial systems.
For farm and food processors, you must consider maximizing the output of the solar arrays, and minimizing the impact on the farmland upon which they are located. Motorized trackers are used to do this in large commercial installations.
Caution: tracking systems are complex and costly in moderate climates.
Management skills required: moderate level of expertise to high level of expertise
Maintenance required: moderate to high
Land impact: sun & rainfall can potentially be repelled so there is risk to crop under array
Drip edge erosion
Latitude space panels to eliminate risk reduces shadowing. Shadowing which can lead to panel damage.
Cloud cover reduces energy capture causes trackers to over-work
Snow impact: manual snow removal required; also the light reflected from snow can cause trackers to turn panels away from sun
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