Perhaps I stated it with too much emphasis on the money. Most companies would be embarrassed to put out a PR saying "we did our paperwork". Everyone expects that of course they did there paperwork. They received the contract offer from the Ontario Power Authority, paid the contract deposits and supplied the required paperwork to get the contracts.
However in Atlantic Wind & Solar Press release dated Oct 12, 2011 they did touch on it and they stated the following: (notice how they said they will update when "NTP is granted".
Record Quarters for Ontario subsidiary
The Company is pleased to report that in quarters two and three of 2011 its Ontario subsidiary, Atlantic Solar Inc. (ASI), processed more CAE solar projects from its pipeline than in any similar prior period since the inception of the OPA FiT Program. ASI had always remained optimistic that more OPA contract offers would be offered at the current tariff rates and is more so given the recent electoral results.
Atlantic CEO, Mr. Gilles Trahan comments: "Atlantic submitted over 11 megawatts of additional CAE solar project applications to the OPA during this short period of time and has prepared another 10 megawatts of applications now ready for submission." Mr. Trahan continued, "Since the restructuring of the organization last May the Company not only increased its processing speed but did so under a significantly reduced cost structure, greatly improving the Corporation's bottom line."
Project Update
At this point Atlantic has submitted all necessary documentation to the OPA for the 20 contracts it has been offered, has received the Waiver of Notice to Proceed (NTP) on 19 out of 20 projects, and has received Connection Impact Assessment (CIA) approval on 4 of the 20. Construction dates for the initial projects will be announced once NTP is granted.
Fine Tuning Its Approach"
Atlantic is fine tuning its approach to the imminent installations in Ontario and perpetually fine tuning the future Ontario business. To this end the Company is currently finalizing the requirements for turn-key solutions for use in, at least, projects one through four.
This has also led to a fine tuning of the Company's relationship with AIM Global Energy Inc. The two companies have entered agreements on various levels over the last two years. Those same two years were marked by a long waiting period for installations. Thus while Atlantic continues its interest in the AIM technology it has to acknowledge that its initial interest in AIM was based on the competitive advantage of inverter performance at the time plus the geographical advantage of its assembly in Ontario and that these two points together would represent a solid head start in Ontario. But both the LOI-to-Lease and Engineering-to-NTP processes turned out to take much longer than anticipated. Atlantic originally saw the Ontario business beginning as a small but steadily growing series of installations that would allow Atlantic and AIM to grow together. Atlantic now foresees the first Ontario installations being a single batch of 4, or 8, or even 16, depending on how fast the next CIA approvals are granted. A bulk-installation approach favours the speed and economies of scale of turn-key solutions over customized installations. In addition the passage of time has brought more manufacturing to Ontario, as indeed was the intent of the FiT Program, plus improvements in technology all around. Atlantic will continue to evaluate using the AIM inverter on a project by project basis but is unlikely to use the technology for the first round or two of Ontario installations.
