By Heather Wright, Sarnia This Week
Work on North America’s largest solar farm is on hold for now. But officials say the Sarnia site will be bustling with activity come summer.
Optisolar Canada, the company building a 60 megawatt project in Sarnia, was sold to First Solar. The deal closed April 10. Thirty people working on the site on Churchill Line in the city were laid off at the time.
But project manager Peter Carrie says it’s only temporary. Carrie says time is needed for some engineering work so different solar panels can be used on the project. By mid-May, construction will continue using the solar panels which First Solar manufactures.
“From a distance, it’s going to look very, very similar — practically speaking — identical to what the original project would have looked like but of course the solar panels that we are dealing with will have First Solar on the back, rather than OptiSolar,” says Carrie.
Carrie says the pace of construction will actually increase this summer since solar panels will now be more readily available. “We’ll be ramping up over the summertime to probably our level of effort, where we could have up to a couple hundred people working on the project.”
When the project is complete, it will generate enough power for one-third of the city’s homes. The project, which is the largest in North America, will cover over 1,000 acres of farmland in the city.
Sarnia This Week Article ID# 1533070
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