SkyPower, Ltd. (SkyPower), and Deutsche Bank have signed a deal to finance two new solar parks in Ontario that will add 18.5 MW of production capacity to the province’s renewable energy industry. The financing will help SkyPower erect a 10 MW installation in Stone Mills and an 8.5 MW solar park in Thunder Bay.

SkyPower is a Toronto-based developer and owner of solar projects with 1500 MW worth of green energy production capacity built, under construction, or in the planning stages across the continent. The company is part-owner of the Canadian energy industry’s first fully operational solar park, First Light I, which is also located in Stone Mills. Deutsche Bank is a global investment bank with headquarters in Germany. It has employees in seventy-two countries and has developed an expanding portfolio of work financing the solar industry and other renewable energy markets. This latest closing with SkyPower is the company’s third in the province in the last nine months.

SkyPower expects its two new installations to collectively produce about 19 million kW-hours in their first year, and over twenty years, to generate enough electricity to power 33,000 homes and divert the equivalent of 60,000 cars’ worth of carbon dioxide from release into the atmosphere. The company plans to complete construction of the projects by the middle of 2011.

Projects, Province Need Graduates of Renewable Energy Classes

Ontario is home to North America’s first-ever feed-in tariff (FIT) program for renewable energy. The program pays high prices to power producers who feed electricity into the grid from renewable sources. It also creates career opportunities in the province with domestic content requirements that specify targets for labour and materials sourced in Ontario. To meet the demand for labour, institutions like Ontario Solar Academy have sprung up to provide classes in renewable energy project design and installation.

SkyPower is enthusiastic about its latest Ontario ventures, which will create a number of career opportunities for renewable energy class graduates. “We are so proud to close financing on our fifth and sixth solar projects and to solidify the arrival of this new era of renewable energy in Ontario,” says SkyPower’s President and CEO, Kerry Adler. “Deutsche Bank and SkyPower are great examples of Ontario’s energy policy and entrepreneurial innovation working together and creating new green energy jobs. We look forward to the closing of financing on many more solar projects in the months ahead.”