Solar panel installation - flat roof

Christie & Bloor Area

This system is installed on the flat roof of a downtown row house. In this case we use racking to tilt the panels to the proper angle. This install leaves room for an additional row of panels behind the ones seen here. The adjustable racking and Enphase inverters mean we can install more panels in the future without having to replace any major components in the system.


The Ontario Government is going where Germany has gone before and has set up a program to encourage people to buy and install their own solar power systems. Called MicroFIT (Feed-in-Tariff), the program is a lot simpler than a standalone solar system since the power goes straight out to the grid instead of charging batteries in your basement. Producers are paid $0.802 per kWh for their power which is a premium of about $0.70 per kWh over today’s going rate and it is guaranteed for 20 years. The rate of return is about 10% per year.

Given the current state of the stock market this seemed like a good investment opportunity to us. More importantly there were significant environmental benefits as well. As it turned out we needed to replace our roof anyway so it seems to be working out very well.

If you are interested in how my panels are doing you can check out this website. Every panel has a little URL that is polled frequently and reports into this cool website to tell me how much fun they are having up there.