Today another manufacturer told me of $55 million in sales lost to the OPA change in microFIT ground mounted pricing. This is just a sign of news I expect to hear more about from within the industry as time goes on.

Unfortunately I don't believe that the OPA understands the severity nor the full implications of their proposed rate change. If this goes through, the OPA and the Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure will loose all credibility within the solar industry.

Many people in the industry assumed that rates would change when the planned 2 year review took place, but for the OPA to decide to change the rate, because people are expected to (in their estimation) earn too much from ground mount installations says, we'll lower your rates, whenever we want, without consideration for your plans.

I am not sure how FIT sized projects can assure their investors that they they will earn a reasonable return, when the OPA could change their rate at anytime. I also don't know how microFIT project developers could make plans to proceed, when the rate may change again tomorrow.

Every project takes time and money to develop, and now no one can proceed on a project because there is no assurance that any rate will be available before they get their contract offer. We cannot make plans, discuss income projections with banks and financiers, because everything we plan could change tomorrow. No longer is the fact that we have applied any assurance that we can make plans, we will need to wait and see what the rate will be when we finally see the OPA offer.

And what if the OPA would say, go ahead, make your plans, everything is good to go. Who will believe them after a rate change? The fact that they did not even say that all the applications in the system would qualify at the rate they applied at, no they said that only those they had approved would get that rate. This is further unsettling news. The fact that, our applications have been we held up for 3-4 months, is just our tough luck, all we can expect is today's rate, or tomorrow's rate or whatever rate we decide to offer when we finally get around to processing your application.

Oh, and another thing. When the OPA states that we will process your application in 30 days, that's just crap too, because we will really process your application whenever we want, so that it suits their plans. And don't forget, that the rate you apply at, really has no relevance on what rate you will get. We just make them up so that we can lure you, and international manufacturers into our province. The OPA obviously has no consideration for anyone's plans, just their own.

I have tried to teach my children as they grow up, to understand what an important thing trust is. We begin relationships trusting one another, but when one person breaks the trust, it takes a very long time before the other party begins to trust again. While the OPA stated that they could change the program at anytime, no one could have guessed that they would lower a rate because we would be making too much money, doing what they said. To me, this is a trust broken, and I am sure that many others that were making plans on developing microFIT projects based on trust in the continuance of the program during the first 2 years, feel betrayed as well.

I urge you to share these feelings with your MP. I don't think that the government should feel that their betraying our trust is something we will let happen without an issue.