Ontario’s Premier, Dalton McGuinty, recently completed a tour of a plant in Guelph, ON that will produce parts for solar modules and create nearly 300 jobs in the community. The new facility is a joint effort between the city’s Melitron Corporation (Melitron) and Calgary-based Sustainable Energy Technologies (Sustainable Energy).

Melitron will own and operate two adjacent facilities. One will manufacture Sustainable Energy’s SUNENERGYTM inverters and the other will make enclosures to house them. Melitron promises high volume production and high quality product, and expects to produce 8-10 MW worth of inverters each month by the end of 2011. This will require the work of 60-80 employees and create more than 200 spin-off jobs. It will also expand Ontario’s green economy and ensure work for students of photovoltaic training classes once they graduate.

Premier McGuinty stated that Ontarians want green energy as well as jobs, and that his Liberal government makes it “a little easier to have both by encouraging innovative businesses, like Sustainable Energy Technologies and Melitron, to invest in clean technology that creates jobs in communities like Guelph.”

Green Energy Act Inspires Photovoltaic Projects, Classes

McGuinty’s provincial government passed the Green Energy Act in May, 2009. Its goal is to “make Ontario a global leader in clean, renewable energy and conservation, creating thousands of jobs,” and its most sweeping attempt to do so is its feed-in tariff (FIT) program. The FIT pays producers of renewable energy to feed clean power into the electrical grid, and is responsible for the creation of numerous manufacturing facilities, jobs, and photovoltaic training classes in the province. Since the inception of the program, Ontario has brought in foreign investors such as Samsung and Schneider Electric, and Sarnia is now home to the largest PV installation in the world.

With the new Guelph facility, the influence of Ontario’s Green Energy Act will now reach across provincial borders. Sustainable Energy benefits from a low-cost manufacturing solution made in Canada, and both companies will profit from the FIT’s domestic content requirements, which stipulate that approved projects must use up to 50% of labour and materials acquired in Ontario. The new inverter plant in Guelph is a necessary component and a welcome addition to the province’s solar industry.