Living beside a massive solar project

Sarnia Photovoltaic Power Plant near Sarnia, Ontario, is as of September 2010 the world's largest photovoltaic plant with an installed capacity of 80 MW. The plant covers 950 acres (380 ha) and contains about 966,000 square metres (96.6 ha), which is about 1.3 million thin film panels.

http://ontario-wind-resistance.org/2012/03/23/living-beside-a-massive-solar-plant-in-ontario/

Melancthon Township Mega-Quarry

An excellent article about the mega-quarry proposed in Melancthon Township, Dufferin County.

http://www.inthehills.ca/back/melancthon/

Barrie Examiner's Series on Solar Farms

Visit the OntarioFarmlandPreservation.org website for the links to Marg Bruineman's four part series published in the Barrie Examiner.

http://ontariofarmlandpreservation.org/MediaReports.html

Symposium a success!!

Alternative Energy & the Family Farm
This symposium, held on November 16th tackled various subjects surrounding Farmland, Soil Inventory, Alternative Power Generation etc. The meeting was sponsored by the Simcoe County Federation of Agriculture. Three of the seven presenters had PowerPoint presentations which they have agreed to make available. Download the PDF versions from the OntarioFarmlandPreservation.org Resources page.

More information about our Alternate Energy and the Family Farm Symposium

A full description of the Symposium format and a description of the proposed speakers can be found here. Please remember that if you intend to come, RSVP to the Simcoe County Federation of Agriculture at (705) 726-9300 Ext. 1224. Seats at the Museum are limited to 100 and are filling up fast!

Newspaper Articles & Resources

Our main website ontariofarmlandpreservation.org has two pages of web links -- one is for online newspaper articles of interest, the other for web pages which link to information like solar potential maps, soil maps, government sites & legislative information.

Some of the new links we've just posted~~

One of the problems with The Green Energy Act is that it allows the Ontario Power Authority to “arbitrarily override” democratically elected councillors and mayors to impose energy projects. Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak has vowed to restore veto power to communities over provincial energy projects if his party forms the next government.
http://www.thestar.com/news/ontario/article/848972--municipalities-should-have-veto-over-energy-projects-tim-hudak

This article shows that there could be worse things than putting solar panels over acres of viable farmland -- you could clear-cut a woodlot and drain a wetland to construct a solar farm!! This seems a possibility in Tay Township near Ottawa.
http://www.yourottawaregion.com/news/local/article/862673--planned-tvt-solar-farm-worries-neighbours

If the experts believe that Northwest Indiana does not have enough sunlight to produce economically viable solar power -- what makes anyone think that we could do it in Canada?
http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/lake/article_6bade84a-4e09-575b-8690-7534eab38ec9.html

To study that further, you could visit the Photovoltaic potential and solar resource maps of Canada
https://glfc.cfsnet.nfis.org/mapserver/pv/index_e.php