• Price Reviews: The pricing in the FIT program will now be reviewed annually each fall starting in October, the results of which will be published in November and implemented on January 1 of the following year. This will give the industry advance notice: a welcome change.
• Allocations: The new directive affirms the future tranches of microFIT and Small Fit allocations: 50 MW of microFIT and 150 MW of Small FIT added each year on Jan. 1 for the next 4 yrs (2014-2017).
• Unused Allocations: Unused portions of the present and any future application windows will roll forward and be added to future application windows.
• No Large FIT: There is unfortunately no good news for Large FIT. The program has been suspended pending re-invention as some manner of “competitive procurement process”.
• OPG Eligible: Ontario Power Generation will now be able to participate in the new procurement process, which will replace the large project stream of the FIT program. It will be interesting to see whether OPG can compete with the private sector on this one: time will tell.
• MUSH Sector: Municipalities, Academic Institutions (Universities and Colleges), grade Schools and Hospitals (MASH) will all be eligible to participate as well, as will all other “Public Sector Entities” that are local to the project.
• MUSH Funding Support: Municipalities and public sector entities will be given funding support in the same manner as the former CEPP program for community groups or the AEPP / AREF programs for aboriginal communities.
• More Set-Asides: There were many more set-aside allocations established that were all annoyingly small: 24 MW for MASH / public sector, 12 MW for communities, 12 MW for Aboriginal communities, with further sub-set-asides for First Nations (8 MW) and Metis (4 MW).
• Spillover: once set asides are spent, eligible applicants dump into the points queue and compete on points (yes, the points system remains).
• COD extensions: COD dates will be extended to 4 years for projects on Aboriginal lands.
• WTO clarifications: Any procurement windows opened after May 24, 2013, will be aligned with the WTO ruling, and will not have domestic content requirements. This likely means that no new procurement windows will open until pricing has been updated as well, thus we (Mindscape) do not expect to see another window until late this year, after this coming fall’s pricing review.
— Originally posted at Mindscape Innovations (www.mi-group.ca) by Derek Satnik, Managing Director of local consultant Mindscape Innovations Group. Republished with permission.