Sault solar farm advances. 'Swimmingly'

Things are going "swimmingly" with the Sault's new solar farm.

So says Pod Generating Group President and Chief Operating Officer Glen Martin.

He says that work behind the scenes on a planned project in Sault Ste. Marie is progressing very well.

"Things are moving along very swimmingly," Martin tells SooToday.com. "We're actually finalizing negotiations on the engineering, procurement and construction contract."

As reported earlier by SooToday.com, Martin's project involves construction of photo voltaic arrays in two locations to produce a total 60 megawatts of energy directly from the sun.

It's projected to cost about $400 million.

Martin (shown during the December 2007 announcement of an agreement between Pod Generating Group and the Ontario Power Authority (OPA)) says there's an operations and maintenance component to the agreement as well as a performance guarantee.

Pod Generating is targeting late in the 2008 construction season to get the shovel in the ground.

But that could be pushed into early in the 2009 season, depending on how quickly business arrangements are finalized, he says.

"We want to get the facilities up and running so we can get something going before it gets too cold to start. We're looking at doing the bulk of the work later in the 2009 year and early in the 2010 year but that doesn't mean we don't want to move ahead and start doing some of the prep work this year."

The West End facility will be located on two sites off Base Line Road.

An East End facility is planned for the Second Line East/ McNabb Street area.

The East End arrays are expected to generate 40 megawatts of power while the West End arrays should generate 20 megawatts, Martin said.

When Pod Generating Group announced its first two standard offer contracts with the Ontario Power Authority in December 2007, it was believed the Sault facilities would be one of the largest solar developments in North America, Martin said.

Now, however, California and Florida have both commissioned solar power generating facilities much larger than the Pod project planned here.

They use different processes though, says Martin.

Those facilities will use sunlight in an indirect way to generate electricity by superheating a liquid in a large pressurized container which then turns a generator to produce electricity.