The Kimberley SunMine an Economic Failure

                              THE SUN HAS SET ON KIMBERLEYS SUNMINE HOPES

The SunMine in Kimberley was originally to be 2MW, the Western Diversificaton Fund pulled their $1.6M subsidy early on when they discovered it had no value.

The project downsized to 1.05MW.

Final project cost $5.65M  $3.65M subsidy,  City of Kimberley borrowed $2M on a referendum telling taxpayers there would be no further costs to the taxpayers.


The SunMine went into operation June 2015, it can't even pay their debt of $2M even with BC Hydro paying full retail for the solar power.

 Now the city is trying to unload it their statement:
 Utilizing taxpayer’s funds to operate SunMine is not   consistent with the City’s original vision for SunMine 
Mayor of Kimberley in front of the SUNMINE, not smiling anymore
They  claim to be the sunniest place in BC, more sun than Phoenix, Arizona


Teck is purchasing the project for the cities outstanding debt of $2.15M.

There must be some other economic advantage for Teck to pay for something that can't pay for itself.
The solar garden is on Teck's old Sullivan mine brownfield contaminated site.  I suspect the solar garden might avoid the millions in remediation costs.

The assessed value of the SunMine is now around $1.65M.

Another BC example of public money disappearing from misinformed and misguided incompetence.

And we have our own

Nelson Community Solar Garden they admit to $339,000 cost, I would say maybe $500,000.

In six months in winter it  didn't make enough power for ONE house.

Nelson is the only city in western Canada with its own hydroelectric generation and distribution making huge profits from selling clean green waterpower. Where might the least likeliest place be to have solar panels?   Its all about perception, we sure do pay to look good.

Nelson doesn't even need all the water, orange inset is excess water, this is when almost all annual solar power is made


The Nelson Dam in winter when we are buying excess power from Fortis solar doesn't work

Data shows how much the solar garden power is worth:

In November it made 1100kWh our dam makes that for  $22
In December it made 525 kWh   "                  "                 $10.50
In January it made      608kWh   "                 "                  $12.16

Nelson hydro sells power to BC Hydro all of last years solar power sold to BC Hydro wouldn't make us $500.

Borrowed money debt repayment real world business case the solar garden debt would be
$23,000 annually for 25 years.  We have 24 more years of pain to pay for this monument to insanity.



The solar garden will be a technological dinosaur in 10 years and is already self destructing.  They couldn't even buy the same solar panels to replace the 6 stolen ones, plus stolen copper, added security cameras, etc.   If we disconnected it now we would be money ahead, waterpower would make the same power for a profit!

                                              The Solar Garden gets an Award
The Solar Garden Award Ceremony
left to right Alex Love manager of Nelson hydro, Carmen Proctor contractor to deliver and monitor construction, never had anything to do with a solar panel before,  ex mayor Kozak holding award, Trish Dehnel Community Energy Rep.

Only 24 more years left in the contract to pay full retail for useless solar power so that money can be distributed among the 130 who opted in for their warm fuzzy feeling from the deceptive program saying it will pay for itself in 10 or 12 years and reach parity in 7 and those who opt in will get their money back.  If they make the rest of us pay more, our electric bills are high enough!



The front row of panels shade the back row, the result of hiring people who don't know what they  are doing



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