Solar Powerful

After a bit of internet searching, Neale was able to find examples of farmers who had stripped down old tractors, added electric motors and batteries.

Voici ce que deviendrait la Terre avec un réchauffement climatique de 4°C

Despite longer hours in June (see graph below), July was our best month generating solar power yet. The sad news is that the party is over for the year. And to drive home that point, we roll into August under heavy grey skies.

The Ontario government has finally released the long-awaited review of the feed-in tariff program (FIT and MicroFIT). The program has been renewed, which means that renewable energy will play a key role in the province's economy.

Currently, the total wind farm capacity in Canada is 5,265 Megawatts, that's enough electricity to power over 1 million homes. Check out this list of the top 10 largest wind farms in Canada.

FIT, or feed-in tariff, is a worldwide, governmentally funded program that is designed to encourage the growth of renewable energy technologies such as solar and wind energy. It is achieved by offering long-term contracts, 20 years in the case the Ontario FIT Program for onshore wind energy projects, to renewable energy producers. Furthermore, the program also awards a lower per-kWh price, 13.5 ¢/kWh for wind power created in Ontario, to further assist in the growth of these renewable technologies.

After almost four months I still don't have any data flowing just a few metres from the solar array to the router in my house. The Tigo Maximizer is supposed to be sending this information - after all, that was a major selling feature of the device.

There has been so much, good and

The Solyndra scandal in the USA has

The following is data from Clean Energy Trends 2012. Some interesting data in the summary charts, more detail in the downloadable PDF report.

The reality of solar panels in the Canadian winter is that they face the same ice and snow that our cars, our houses and we, ourselves, face. How this affects you - the solar panel owner - depends on whether you have a rooftop installation or ground-mounted panels.

So we generated just 79.7 percent of what we "should" have (according to the official PVwatts chart). At least that is better than the 70.5 percent rate of the previous two months.