Parker Gallant to Energy Minister Chiarelli: another idea?

[Tongue in Cheek Letter # 3]

September 22, 2013

The Honourable Bob Chiarelli, Minister of Energy,

Dear Minister:

By now you have probably received both my September 9^thand my September 13^th letters but haven't had the chance to reply because of your busy schedule.  I saw a picture of you smiling while at the International  Plowing Match in Mitchell last week, and a delightful picture of you with the Mothers Against Wind Turbines, so I know you have been running around the province doing lots of things.

In the meantime my family has been doing a lot of research and they have almost convinced me that instead of not producing electricity from industrial wind turbines I should look at not  producing it from solar panels.  They pointed out to me that rooftop solar pays 39.6 cents for not producing as long as you have 5 megawatts or more installed.  Now that would take a pretty big roof as I understand that solar needs about 44,000 square feet per megawatt, so you would need a darn big barn.

My barn is pretty small so wouldn't work but I was thinking that the old Picton Air Base might be just the place.  I could look into renting the roofs if you could promise me one of those nice Ontario Power Authority contracts for the solar power that I will not produce.   I have attached an aerial photo of the Air Base (look at all those empty roof tops) so you can get some idea of what we are talking about.  I wouldn't actually put any panels up because it doesn't make sense to spend all that money on panels to produce power that you plan on paying me to not produce.

If you think I need to put up some solar panels I will, but, if that happens, I hope that I can get one of those nice grants from Deborah Doncaster at the Community Energy Partnerships Program (CEPP) that your Ministry gave money to.  I sure hope they still have some of that $10 million left.  A $500,000 grant would sure buy a lot of panels that I could use to not produce power and be paid $396.00 per megawatt hour for what they won't produce.  I am hoping that I won't need to install any, however, so that we can save some money for other people that are going to produce power that we might export to New York or Michigan.  

I would greatly appreciate it if you could you put in a kind word to Ms. Doncaster for me just in case I need some panels for show.  In the meantime I will look into renting those roof tops. Looking forward to your positive response,

Parker Gallant

The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily Wind Concerns Ontario.

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