Why a solar Ontario blog?

Welcome to “The Solar Ontario Blog”.

I suppose that is what one should say on one’s first post. And I suppose I should start by answering the simple question: “Why a solar Ontario blog?”

There are two answers.  The first one is a fairly simple statement of our purpose: to provide solid information for people thinking of generating their own solar power at their home, farm or business.

Some of this information will be Ontario-specific, but most of it will be useful to people everywhere.  Some of the information will be useful only to people selling to a utility, and some of it will be useful only to people getting off the grid.  Most of the information will be useful to everybody.

The second answer requires a bit of background.  I had been one of those people wanting to “get off the grid”.  Over the years, I had looked at a number of systems and just a few months ago I was researching wind,.  We decided against wind for a number of reasons, which I will probably blog about later.

About the same time, we received a number of pamphlets about solar power.  It only took a few calls to convince me that it would be so much more profitable to sell solar power to the grid under the MicroFIT program than to get off the grid.  (Some have suggested MicroFIT is a big rip-off for taxpayers.  But this is one of those cases where a simple statistic can be very misleading.  I know I will blog about this later.)

In future posts, I will report on setting up our solar power generation.  I will also provide tips and advice – I have already learned a lot and I am still learning.  And I will bring news about solar power and other green energy technologies.