Over the past year, the Ontario Power Authority (OPA) has been working hard to establish their Feed-In Tariff Programs as the way forward for green energy in North America. As can well be imagined, this continues to be an exciting prospect for Ontarians, and as more and more people gain interest in the program, the OPA finds itself with more and more work on its hands.

The FIT and microFIT Programs, established last fall, provide a significant reimbursement to home or land-owners who install green energy production systems on their property and feed energy back into the grid. On June 1st, the OPA provided a timeline on their website for the amount of time they projected it would take for FIT applications to go through.

While this is certainly helpful information, what was more interesting to us here at Clearly Solar was the little note at the bottom of the page: "Contracts for capacity allocation exempt projects submitted after the launch period (after November 30, 2009) will begin in early June. Contracts will be offered on an ongoing basis as applications are deemed complete."

In plain English that means that applications for systems generating under 500kW - the kind of systems we sell and design - should be going through right now, and new contracts submitted from here on will have a bit of a wait ahead of them.

We can hear you asking: what does all this mean? The answer, friends, is simple. The OPA is having a tough time keeping up with the popularity of their own program, but contracts are finally starting to trickle through. In the words of the British government, keep calm and carry on. Your solar incentives are right around the corner.

Think Clearly!