Solar Residential Pilot Termination

The ecoENERGY for Renewable Heat program’s Residential Pilot Initiative (the Pilot), will terminate March 31, 2011.  The deadline for commissioning eligible projects was December 31, 2010.

The government is currently reviewing all of its climate change programs to determine how best to move Canada toward becoming a clean energy superpower.  No decisions have yet been made on future programs.

Goals of the Pilot

The goal of the EcoAction initiatives was to reduce Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions and improve Canada’s clean energy supply infrastructure. The goal of the Pilot was to determine the most efficient and effective ways to market solar water heaters to homeowners and to develop Canada’s solar thermal industry.

Anatomy of the Pilot

The Pilot was the largest residential solar thermal funding initiative in Canadian history. In 2007, 39 companies, representing over $30 million worth of funding requests, responded to a call for letters of interest and competed with each other for $9 million of incentive funding. The reverse-auction process resulted in 14 proponents being selected and receiving an average federal incentive per installed solar water heating system of about $1,100.

Results of the Pilot

Over its 4-year duration, the Pilot:

• influenced the installation of over 1000 solar domestic water heating systems across Canada’s six most populous provinces;
• increased the capacity of Canada’s solar thermal supply industry;
• introduced large-scale solar water heating into Canada’s utility market space; and
• most significantly, modernized and rendered more workable Canada’s solar thermal regulatory standards (CSA F378, F379, F383 and B64) paving the way for further industry growth & development.

Serious industry regulatory barriers were encountered that prevented the installation of most of the 8,000 systems anticipated under the Pilot.

However, the Pilot incentive was set up to pay only for successfully deployed systems.  So, rather than wasting them, unused Pilot funds were provided to the program’s Commercial Deployment Incentive, where they supported solar heating installations in Canada’s commercial sector.

The 10 participants listed below contributed to the Pilot’s over 1000 solar domestic water heating system installations.

Company Name	Location
Bullfrog Power Inc.	ON/AB
Eaga Canada Services Inc.	BC
ENMAX Energy Corporation	AB
FortisBC Inc.	BC
L'Agence de L'éfficacité energetique	QC
Manitoba Hydro	MB
Rock Paper Sun Ltd.	SK
Sustainable Ottawa	ON
Taylor Munro Energy Systems Inc.	BC
Utilties Kingston	ON