Notwithstanding the McGuinty government’s recent retrenchment on one of the government’s more egregiously profligate solar power subsidy schemes, the remaining solar Feed-In Tariff (FIT) program rewards solar producers with prices so much higher than any measure of the value of electricity produced that the program remains vulnerable to fraud. With many thousands of installations and the prospects for vast illicit profits, Ontario will attract the attention the solar criminal element.
Grid power can be purchased at prices one quarter or less compared to what the government is paying solar producers under FIT. Even primitive diesel generators can deliver power for about half the solar prices.
This vast margin between value and subsidized purchase price creates endless opportunities for fraudsters to use more economical substituted power to inflate their solar profits.
Fraudsters might replace a few of their costly solar panels with simple sheets of glass painted to look like the real thing. To avoid detection, solar substituting power might be sold back to the government at quantities exactly matching the production pattern of real panels. Rather than incurring the expense of maintaining and insuring panels, the degradation of performance over time could be replaced by fraudulently supplied power.
Currently, the Ontario Power Authority has no capacity for fraud protection. Examples of fraud protection measures that are required include unannounced inspections. fraud detection software tools to scan invoices for potential fraud, and remote sensing capacity to detect tampering.
I think that the bigger problem is that solar power in Ontario is not just a waste of money, i’ts a waste of energy. If you add up all of the individual btus and kwhs involved in a solar installation in cloudy Ontario, the payback time is never, not in a million years.
Why not go all the way here and call the whole “Green Energy Scam” a fraud?
There is nothing in the this Government’s Green Mandate that doesn’t smell bad!
Green energy is not all a scam and a fraud, although the Green Energy Act might make it appear so.
Question. If i reduce my electricity demand by 20% for example. My monthly bill is $100 and i manage through conservation and conscious effort to reduce it to $80 am i not effectively putting 20% back into the system? Rather than put solar panels on my roof and charge the liberal govt 80c a kwh i purpose to only charge them 50c per kwh for what i dont use (the 20%) that would effectively mean my electricity is free and they owe me some money. They already pay people not to use their air conditioners (a subsidy for conservation) which is in effect what they are doing but the payment isnt quite as large. Why not say, for every percentage drop in historic usage we will pay (x amount of $). This would in effect put more money in every bodies pockets not just the financing of a few pop-up companies pocketbooks with zero benefit in green energy production or employment.
Mr. Brooks’s comment highlights the inherent logical problems in paying someone to not do something. Conservation programs based on the concept that consumers should be paid for not doing something should only be considered in exceptional cases when more rational alternatives are not available.