By Ally Dunham

Kenora District Services Board (KDSB) has been working diligently toward installing roof-top, solar, MicroFit systems on nine of their buildings, through the Province of Ontario’s Green Energy initiative.

There are three buildings each in Kenora, Dryden and Red Lake, which were identified as potential host buildings for these small 10 KVW systems. In Red Lake, it has been determined that it would not be in the best interest of KDSB to proceed with either Follansbee, citing roofing issues and connection deadlines, or George Aiken Manor, citing roof direction.

KDSB have been pursuing Ontario Power Authority (OPA) approval and contract offers, and have received contract offers for the nine buildings, connection approvals on eight buildings and the MicroFit project was then advanced to the next stage.

Request For Proposals (RFP) were received from many regional contractors, with the winning bids going to Ray Solar of Kenora to complete the Kenora buildings, Maki Solar of Thunder Bay, to complete the Dryden buildings, and Pine River Solar of Thunder Bay will be completing the one remaining Red Lake building.

KDSB notes in the detailed tender analysis there is a range of electric production estimates from each vendor. They have used the vendor’s production estimate to project the expected annual revenue and the payback in years.

In the original return on investment analysis, they were utilizing projected capital costs at $70,000 per building and a revenue estimate of $10,000 per year, estimating a return on investment (ROI) in the 13 to 15 per cent range.

The RFPs have produced an average system capital cost of $76,000 and a conservative estimated annual revenue of $10,200 per year.

KDSB says for the most part, the initial ROI analysis still stands as the RFP capital costs are slightly higher and the generation revenue estimate used in the analysis are a little lower than what the vendors and projection software was estimating.

Construction time and connection dates are a critical issue, with connection dates of April 11, 2012 for Kenora, April 5, 2012 for Dryden and May 2, 2012 for Red Lake.

Total pricing for Parkview, Trillium and Amethyst in Kenora from Ray Solar was $214,366. Total pricing for Dryden, inclusive of 10 Victoria, 330 Van Horne, and Patricia Plaza was $239,645 and Red Lake’s Sunset Leisure Manor came in at a low bid of $78,811.