Last Monday, Scarborough's McGrogror Park Arena got its own solar roof. It's already generating energy that will feed into the city's electric grid.
The roof is the result of a partnership between the City of Toronto and Toronto Hyrdo that will see 10 city-owned buildings, including McGregor Park, outfitted with photovoltaic (PV) panels to generate power for Toronto Hyrdo.
According to
Toronto Hydro projections, the energy from the project is expected to generate more than $16 million in gross revenues for the city over the next 20 years and will result in a reduction of approximately 480 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions per year.
"We've been working on this program with Toronto Hydro for just over two years," says Rob Maxwell, manager of the city's Renewable Energy Office. The roofs of city buildings, says Maxwell, are underused assets. "It's empty space for the most part and we wanted to take advantage of that asset in order to meet both environmental and financial objectives of the city."
Council approved the project in 2011 and awarded the contract for engineering and installing the panels to Vancouver-based
Carmanah Technologies. After that, Maxwell and his colleagues got to work combing through possible candidates for the project. While the city has more than 1,500 buildings in its portfolio, narrowing those down to 10 ideal sites, says Maxwell "was a very elaborate and complicated task."
"For example, we needed to understand the condition of the roof, we needed to sure it was not scheduled to undergo major maintenance over the next 20 years—that's the life of the contract we signed for generating electricity—because we don't want to have to remove the system in order to do major roof maintenance."
In addition, says Maxwell, the roofs in question had to be both structurally sounds, not situated in shaded areas or "anywhere where it is likely that a building built adjacent to in the future may cause shading problems."
The 10 city owned buildings chosen for the project are:
Mimico Arena – 31 Drummond Street
York Mills Arena – 2539 Bayview Avenue
Goulding Park Community Centre/Arena – 45 Goulding Avenue
Police College – 70 Birmingham Street
Agincourt Park Arena – 31 Glen Watford Drive
Victoria Village Arena – 190 Bermondsey Road
Malvern Community Centre – 30 Sewells Road
Grandravine Community Centre/Arena – 23 Grandravine Drive
Roding Community Centre/Arena – 600 Roding Street
McGregor Park Arena – 2231 Lawrence Avenue East
The electricity produced by panels will be purchased by the Ontario Power Authority (OPA) through its
feed-in-tariff program (also known as FIT), which pays a premium price for electricity from renewable energy sources.
"The total capacity we're looking to develop is two megawatts and these 10 buildings in the initial phase of the program will generate one megawatt. So when we finish installation on these 10 buildings we're halfway to our target."
However, due to the recent review of the FIT program, the OPA is not currently accepting reapplications.
"We're kind of on hold with the next phase of the project. We're just waiting to see when they will start processing reapplications. But we do have applications before the Ontario Power Authority for number of other sites."
Writer: Katia Snukal
Source: Rob Maxwell, Manager Renewable Energy Office, City of Toronto