Conquering the Wild West of solar

Rooftop solar: The Wild West of sustainable energy

The Ontario government’s feed-in tariff program and related initiatives have produced a groundswell of new development in commercial rooftop solar power generation, involving not only cutting-edge photovoltaic technologies and implementation techniques, but also novel co-ordinations of diverse stakeholders, including developers, installers, building owners, aggregators, investors and government.

For many development-based businesses, at least some facets of such projects remain frontier territory, with best practices either still being established “on the ground”, or simply not yet broadly propagated.

If you are one of these businesses, you may find yourself a little lost in the many facets of solar. Some of these facets include:

• System architecture
• Connecting to the grid
• Various components
• Installation equipment and techniques
• Standards and safety
• Rooftop integrity
• Agreements
• Liability and insurance
• Loans and investment

Often, it’s difficult to cross-pollinate best practices of each of these elements in order to improve understanding of critical issues and solutions within the industry. If you are a solar developer, installer, integrator or aggregator looking to conquer this Wild West of solar, you’ll be interested in our event, Rooftop Solar: Best practices for project developers, taking place Thursday, March 24.

For an introduction to some of the topics to be discussed by our presenters, the following reports may be helpful:

• Partners in Project Green‘s Rooftop Solar Report identifies common barriers slowing the widespread adoption of rooftop solar projects in the commercial and industrial sectors. You can access its contents via this interactive diagram, or download the original report.
• SolarCity Partnership has produced a guide to Best Practices for Large Solar Energy Installations, based on reviews of a number of such projects in the GTA.
• Brent Harris of Sustainable Energy Technologies has written an article on rooftop solar system integration.

Rooftop solar: Click for the interactive report

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