“I can build you a biodigester in nine months but I can’t get it connected,” complained Don McCabe, vice-president of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture at a press conference held recently to announce recommendations for a green energy act.

The refrain was similar at a meeting of the Toronto Community Solar Roundtable. When asked what was the biggest problem for people wanting to install solar panels on their roofs, David Booz was emphatic: “Connection, connection, connection.” Booz, who heads the West Downtown Initiative for Solar Energy cites long delays, inexperience and a lack of incentives on the part of the utility.  This has left many people intent on reducing their personal carbon footprint frustrated and resigned.

Certainly getting connected to the electricity grid is a major barrier for renewable energy generators across Ontario and the reasons are numerous. Specific provisions in the proposed green energy act have been recommended to overcome these obstacles, both bureaucratic and technical.

Glen Estill, a small wind generator with three turbines up on the Bruce Peninsula and six south of Grand Bend, blames the process. “The biggest problem with Ontario today is transmission and distribution connection rules that prevent many projects from even being considered, much less built. We have billions of investment in wires, transformers, poles and towers that we are not using to deploy renewable energy simply because of the rules,” he writes in his blog.

The result is what is referred to in the biz as “the queue” - long lineups of potential green energy producers, some of whom will never raise a windmill or install a single solar panel but who are holding up others who are ready to go. Estill equates these to the “no shows” in the airline industry: people who reserve tickets but don’t make their flights.

“Developers need the certainty that if they build a project, they can be connected,” says Estill. “Without this certainty they won’t invest in studying winds, zoning applications, environmental assessments, resource studies, permits and assembling land.”

Estill may well be right that the problem is not just the wires or transformers. The lack of capacity on the grid for renewables, however, is a major issue. Huge swaths of the province, including Toronto where the demand for energy is greatest and most of the nine counties along and inland from Lake Huron have been painted a bright orange and the generation of renewables in this zone are tightly constrained. Plans are underway to expand the Bruce to Milton transmission line, but this is primarily to carry the power from the Bruce nuclear reactors. 

Based in Milverton in rural Perth County, Countryside Energy has been working, in collaboration with Windshare Co-op, for three years to develop Ontario’s first community-owned windfarm.  However, its plan for a 10 MW wind farm in Bruce Country, one of the windiest parts of the province, has been stymied for the last two years because of the orange zone. 

“Our members really want to do something, not only about adverse climate change that threatens the future of our children, but also about the smog and air pollution that is causing untold health problems for people.  However, we are being prevented from doing anything,” said co-op manager Doug Fyfe. 

Cost is another consideration. Right now any of the more than 90 utilities in province can charge whatever they want to connect renewable energy projects to the grid. This can widely vary widely from just a few hundred dollars to install a second meter on a home with solar photovoltaic cells on the roof to more than a thousand dollars.  In some cases the cost of connecting can make a sustainable energy project unfeasible. 

Under the proposed green energy act, the generator would continue to have to pay for the connection. However, utilities would have to cover the cost for any upgrades to the distribution system needed to make that connection. They would then be able to recover those costs from ratepayers but would be required to declare those costs to ensure that ratepayers were not being charged for upgrades that would have been undertaken regardless of the need to connect renewables. 

The Green Energy Allliance is also recommending that sustainable energy projects be given priority access to the grid before other forms of energy generated by nuclear plants or by burning fossil fuels.  Most importantly though, the proposed green energy act would obligate utilities to connect green energy to the grid and  do this in a timely fashion.  This is essential if renewables are to be deployed as widely and as urgently as scientists say is necessary to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that are causing the planet to warm.