On November 23, 2012, the Minister of Energy issued a directive to the Ontario Power Authority (OPA) based on recommendations from a working group established to provide advice on ground-mounted solar PV projects on rural lands with multiple primary uses or abutting residential uses. The directive requires the OPA to amend the feed-in tariff (FIT) 2.0 program rules, which were released on August 10, 2012 (see our Flash of August 13, 2012), to make project siting for ground-mounted solar PV projects somewhat less restrictive. Among other changes, the rules will now permit ground-mounted solar PV projects greater than 10 kW on rural lands with or abutting residential uses as long as the project follows prescribed visual screening and setback requirements.
The directive also clarifies the priority given to local community and Aboriginal community participation projects under the OPA's existing contract capacity set-aside in the current FIT 2.0 rules. The directive clarifies that this set-aside will be divided equally between community equity and Aboriginal equity participation projects and also divided equally between the small FIT and large FIT project application windows. Once the capacity is allocated or there are no more participation project applications, the OPA will no longer prioritize such projects over any other applications and will process applications for all projects in accordance with the Prioritization Points Table (which may include community or Aboriginal projects).
The directive also requires the OPA to move forward with the small FIT project application window as soon as possible and to award 200 MW of small FIT projects. The timing to open the large FIT application window has not yet been announced.
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