Insurance and MicroFIT

Insurance is something that we should all have if we own anything that would cause us a lot of trouble if something were to ever happen to the item. A solar system is something that for ten's of thousands of dollars, is something that you would want covered.

The other thing about the panels is that they are attached to your house and in the event that they happen to start a fire, you would want your house insurance to cover the costs of rebuilding your house to ensure you were not stuck with the bill. The likelyhood of this is very very small, but to me, it is worth going into detail to ensure no possible problems could arrise.

My suggestion to you is to investigate your insurance with your insurance company BEFORE you sign a contract with an installer or pay for anything as it should be taken care of first. Back in the summer, I called my insurance company, TD Meloche Monex, and told them what I was doing. I told them that the cost of the panels would depreciate and I asked them straight up, 'if the panels would cause a fire, would they cover the damage?' This question went to the under-writers and I was told, yes. As long as they were approved for use in Ontario and that they had the proper ESA certifications, this would be fine.

The quote they gave me was about 5$/month, which I thought was pretty reasonable, so I went along and got my system installed.

After the connection to the LDC, I called back my insurance company to put the additional insurance on and the guy said, yup no problem and then he said, everything is fine with one condition on the agreement. 'If you use the panels for commerical purposes, any damage caused by the panels would NOT be covered'.

Of course I raised the red flag and was thinking, why was this not told to me back in the summer. I explained exactly what I was doing, selling the power back to the LDC and they said it was fine. Fortunately, I got one of the very good sales agents and I told him that it was unacceptable and that I would be switching insurance companies and he told me he would talk to the underwriters to see if this could be removed.

He called me back a couple hours later and told me the first level of underwriter's could not remove the line but a higher level underwriter could so he contacted them and wouldn't you know it, he was able to get it removed! I was thrilled, so for an extra 5$/month, my panels are covered.

I was also told that I could call in every year and tell them the 'new/depriciated' value of the panels and it would lower the insurance premiums.

I have asked another person and they were paying almost 40$/month for the insurance with the panels....

What insurnace company do you have and how much is your monthly premium?

Official OPA MicroFIT Contract Offered

Yesterday was a great day when I checked my email and found that the OPA had offered me the final Contract that will pay me 80.2 cents/kWh for the next 20 years. This is the MicroFIT contract in Ontario.

My connection date to the grid was December 3rd so Any power generated since then will be eligible for payment.

I accepted the offer which requried information on the Ontario content rules. I only needed 40% content rule because my conditional contract was from 2010. New content rules for 2011 I believe are 60% Ontario content. I will elaborate more on this in the future!

It took about 7 weeks (plus the Christmas break) to get my local distribution company (LDC) and a couple emails to LDC to get them to send the OPA my connection information and then another week for OPA to finalize the contract and offer it to me.

So, I guess that means that I just have to wait because the cheque should be in the mail soon!

Do I use the power I generate?

This is one of the first questions that people ask when they find out that I have solar panels. They want to know if I generate enough power to power my house.

My answer is always the same, "I don't use any of it, I sell it all". This usually catches people off guard because they assume that the intent is to be 'off the grid' so to speak. This while has benefits such as self sufficiency, and the ability to have power if there were ever another black out, but is really not very advantages because of the government of Ontario's MicroFIT program.

This program essentially makes it foolish to use any of the power because the Ontario Power Authority (OPA) is willing to pay 80.2 cents/kWh and KW Hydro only charges 6.5 cents/KWh at the moment. The other benefit is that I don't need to store any energy via batteries so the cost is lower to get going. So, the long and short of it is that all power generated is sent directly to the power grid!

In the future, I will be talking much more about this contract that I have with the OPA and the benefits and drawbacks that are sure to encounter along my journey.