Sunny times ahead for Brockville?

Brockville has a new moniker: Sunnyville.

And that's the name the partners are using for a new solar-panel installation training program to be offered at Brockville's St. Lawrence College campus and co-ordinated through the Employment and Education Centre (EEC), which hosted the launch on Thursday.

Leeds-Grenville MPP Steve Clark announced that the Ontario Trillium Foundation has given $503,300 toward the program, under which up to 60 students will be trained to install photovoltaic panels used on solar farms and rooftop installations. The industry is expected to boom as projects are approved during the next year and solar farms start springing up all around Eastern Ontario.
Brockville will be the epicentre of the boom, said Joe Jordan of Upper Canada Solar, a project partner along with the college and EEC.

The Sunnyville training program for solar-panel installers is the first of its kind in Canada, said EEC special projects co-ordinator Sue Watts.

"The future is dawning now with this program," Clark told a small crowd of media and dignitaries Thursday morning. "We will have many sunny days ahead."

"It's a great day for Brockville. It's a great day for the partners," said St. Lawrence College president Chris Whitaker, who noted the program would fit well with the college's new "centre of excellence" in renewable energies. The college also has geothermal and wind thermal programs at its Kingston location.

"There's lots of opportunities to bring leading-edge training here," the college president told the Brockville crowd. "I know it's going to be an incredible project."

Jordan said several factors have created "the perfect storm" in making Brockville and Eastern Ontario a hotbed for solar installations: low smog, high sunshine numbers, inexpensive land and upgraded hydro infrastructure following the ice storm of 1998.

"That's the perfect storm," said Jordan, a former Leeds-Grenville MP. "We really are in the epicentre here."

He compared the current state of the solar industry to "a gold rush" that will follow years of economic difficulties in the region.

"We desperately need to grab sustainable jobs in this region," Jordan said.

"Ontario is going to be one of the hottest solar markets for the next 20 years. There is billions of dollars going to be invested in this region."

Noah Rossman, associate sales director of Canadian Solar in Ottawa, said the program graduates will have a "sustained future in the field."