Quinte Conservation asks public to weigh in on solar farm

By Ashliegh Gehl

Generating solar power on conservation land will be a matter of discussion Tuesday night.

Quinte Conservation has teamed with Solar Science Inc., to put together a solar farm plan.

Jennifer May-Anderson, communications and marketing specialist for Quinte Conservation, says the solar panels would be located on 42 acres of vacant farmland the north end of the property.

“We thought that it would be a good place to generate solar power,” said May-Anderson.  “As far as we know, that’s a very good site for solar power production. The land itself is vacant at the moment. It’s not being used for trail use or anything like that so we thought that would be a good productive use of the land.”

May-Anderson says public input is an integral part of the plan.

“Once we get the public’s input and do some more exploring with Solar Science we’ll know more about how the project will work and what it would looks like,” said May-Anderson.

The number of panels is still uncertain.

“There’s a very lengthy process, in terms of working with solar power, making sure that all of your i’s are dotted and your t’s are crossed. This is just the very beginning stage of the long process. Our engineer Bryan Keene will be going through that process with anyone who comes to the open house.”

Quinte Conservation hopes to take advantage of Ontario’s Feed-In Tariff program.

“That’s the hope. That we would be able to take advantage of the FIT program as long as we can get everything done within the timelines that the program requires.”

The open house will be held Tuesday from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.