Canadian Solar.
There are a lot of different ways governments encourage the development and growth of clean energy. While staying with Dawna’s family just outside of Ottawa this Christmas, we had the opportunity to visit a neighbor’s solar installation and talk over the economics of this particular system. In Canada they don’t subsidize the manufacturers (China) or the installers (U.S.A) but rather they subsidize the production in the form of high retail purchasing of kWh produced ($0.802 / kWh)
This particular system was a 10kW system and the owner told us he averages about $12,000 per year in revenue. This for a system he paid $86,000 to install. All in all he’s expecting to have the system paid for in about 10 years, while the contract with the federal government is for 20 years, and the panels are rated at 80% production at 20 years. A pretty good deal for people who take the time to work out the math. This particular system like those we install uses an Enphase micro-inverter for each 200w panel which allows him to look at the performance of each individual panel.
