North Cowichan - I can understand if individuals want to do their own personal installations of solar panels at their own cost - have at it! But there is no way local government should be using our property taxes to finance this money losing proposition, as advocated by Mayor Lefebure and councillors Kate Marsh, Rob Douglas and Maeve Maguire who all support the Climate Action Energy Plan, that includes using our property taxes to do just that.
Why does Mayor Lefebure insist he makes money with his home installation of solar panels when the plain facts indicate otherwise?
I attended a solar panel presentation last fall put on by the carbon busters. The mayor was there too. One of the contractors at the presentation told me that the average cost to install an average home's 4.4 kilowatt capacity was about $17,600 and about $22,400 if financing was required. He also stated that North Cowichan had about 1,100 hours of sunlight for operation. The contractor said that a 20 year amortization (years of operation) was a reasonable life expectancy for the system.
Given those facts, the cost to produce a kilowatt is $0.23 for solar power. Why would anyone produce solar power when you can buy clean, green, and unlike wind and solar power, on demand, BC Hydro power for $.08 kw? If you sell your solar generated power back to BC Hydro, the solar provider gets a credit of $0.10 per kw. How does Mayor Lefebure figure he is making a profit when the solar producer is in fact losing anywhere from $0.13 to $0.15 per kw?
Sounds like misguided special interests taking over North Cowichan council to me.
Don Swiatlowski
North Cowichan