Solar power - Arnprior Solar Farm

The Arnprior Solar Project is a 23.4MW solar farm developed on two adjacent properties located near the town of near Arnprior, Ontario, Canada. It consists of 312,000 PV thin film solar panels made by First Solar mounted on 13,000 racks on a 200 acre field. 23.4MW is enough to power 7,000 homes.

This is a project by EDF EN Canada, the Canadian arm of EDF-Energies-Nouvelles, a French renewable-energy company. The project having been commisioned in January 2010, it sells the power to the Ontario power grid via the local Hydro One distribution company under the Renewable Energy Standard Offer Program (RESOP) at a price of $0.42 CDN per kilowatt hour under a 20 year contract (the RESOP program no longer exists for new projects, having been replaced with the Renewable Energy Feed-In Tariff program.)

The following are two panorama views of the Arnprior solar farm. Use the scrollbars to see the complete pictures. A map is below if you want to orient yourself.

Looking south-east from Galetta Side Road.

Looking north-west from highway 17.

Each rack has two posts and holds 24 solar panels (4 rows of 6.)

Rear view.

Racks with panels still to be mounted (November 13, 2009.)

The ground is mostly clay and the poles (according to one person who watched them being placed in the ground) have augers on their lower ends and were "screwed" into the ground.

Finding it

Although it's near Arnprior, it's really in the western part of the city of Ottawa. It's at the intersection of the Galetta Side Road and the highway 17. Note that Google's satelite map below may not yet show it but if not, it's where brown area is to the right of the oval path at the corner of the two roads.