Wise to be leery

Town council is facing a dilemma in deciding whether to install solar panels atop the Public Works garage, Memorial Sports Centre, Children’s Complex, water treatment plant, and the Civic Centre in order to generate electricity which then can be sold back to the grid for much-needed revenue.
The proposal certainly seems like a no-brainer. Under the microFIT program, for generators of less than 10 kilowatts, the town would be guaranteed 80 cents per kilowatt hour over a 20-year contract with the Ontario Power Authority (OPA), which is projected to work out to $761,620 in revenue for the town in that span.
The catch is that it initially will cost the town $453,500 to install the rooftop-mounted solar panels—and if council does go ahead with the project, it has a year to proceed with the panels or lose the agreement.
Even so, some members of council and administration still think the whole thing is too good to be true. There are questions over what happens to the panels if these roofs need repairs down the road, and whether they will stand up to high winds and hail.
There’s also doubt whether Northern Ontario’s hydro transmission and distribution lines even can handle more electricity being fed into the grid.
The biggest red flag, however, is the incredulous pledge by the province to pay 80 cents per kilowatt hour over the duration of the 20-year contract when it is selling that same kilowatt hour to hydro consumers for just five cents. True, customers already are subsidizing that lopsided payout as a line item on their monthly bill, but how long can the province afford to sustain such a gap?
And what if a new government is elected this October, or sometime down the road, and nixes the program? What then?
While the move towards renewable energy sources is a laudable one, town council is right in not blindly snatching this revenue carrot without first thinking it through. After all, we’ve all been taught that if it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is.