Parkhill Dam can generate about $1 million a year in electricity, but it could take five years to get all the approvals in place to build a dynamo there.

And across town, solar panels are expected to soon start popping up on the roofs of public and private buildings, to generate renewable energy under a provincial incentive plan.

The idea of building a power house at the west end of the dam has been kicked around for years, including a formal feasibility study was done in 1999 by the Grand River Conservation Authority and Cambidge-North Dumfries Hydro. It didn’t make financial sense then, but provincial electricity pricing contracts announced in October have changed the power play.

“Construction would cost about $4.8 million, so it’s a five-to-seven year payback period. It’s a nice payback period,” said Joe Farwell, the authority’s engineer and assistant chief administrative officer.

The dam was built in 1837 just north of Queen Street—now Parkhill Road—to store water that was later released down a Mill Race channel to power grist, flour and woollen mills along the east bank of the river. The original mill stills stands today at Parkhill and Water Street.

Other water-powered factories that lined the river are now gone, replaced with flood walls, earthen berms and Mill Race Park.

The authority already runs electrical generating stations at three dams upstream of Parkhill dam, generating $450,000 a year in revenue from electricity sales.

A Parkhill dynamo would double the power generated by the conservation authority. But because of sweeter provincial power purchase prices approved in October, it would triple the annual revenue.

So Farwell is dusting off Parkhill plans and getting ready to start the complicated provincial approval process to generate power at Parkhill.

“We understand hydro development, but we don’t understand the feed in tariff program yet,” Farwell said.

The conservation authority installed a power plant at the Shand Dam in the headwaters of the Grand two decades ago. It generates about 600 kW—enough to power about 1,000 homes. Long-term contracts have expired there, so power is sold on the electricity “spot market.” These days, that’s about three cents a kWh—or half the going rate charged by Cambridge-North Dumfries hydro to consumers.

The Guelph Lake power plant is small—about 100 kW—but the Conestoga dam is 600 kilowatts. It sells about $300,000 electricity a year at 6.8 cents a kWh. 

Parkhill’s power potential is about 1.3 megawatts, or double Shand and Conestoga. And with the new lock in rate for a 40-year water power contract at 13.1 cents/kWh, that’s about $1 million revenue a year.

If Parkhill pans out, then Farwell is looking downstream to put power plants on dams at Caledonia and Dunnville. 

Shaky Fahel is redeveloping the former American Standard factory on the Speed River in Hespeler. He’s eager to start talking with the city and conservation authority to install a power plant at the dam that came with the factory.

Cambridge has ownership of two dams downstream: at the former Silknit factory in Hespeler and at Riverside Park in Preston.

When repairs were done on Silknit three years ago, the city looked at a power plant there, said Phil Antoniow, from the city’s engineering department. At the time, the power sale price wouldn’t have repaid upfront costs “for 15 or 20 years,” he said.

An environmental review of the Riverside dam is about to start, looking at whether the crumbling structure should be rebuilt or ripped out. New provincial prices means a power plant could be one of the considerations there, he said.

There’s no other private water power generation plans under consideration in the Cambridge area, said John Grotheer, president of Cambridge-North Dumfries Hydro. 

There are, however, six or seven proposals by homeowners to generate electricity from solar panels on their roofs in the backyards, under 20-year power contracts, Grotheer said. 

Cambridge council considers a plan Monday to start putting solar panels on the roof of the Bishop Street works yard. Kitchener is talking about the same thing for the roof of its new central maintenance facility.

Grotheer expect more people to come forward looking to make some money under the plan, once private companies start offering to rent their roofs to install power panels. The province wants 100,000 homes generating electricity. Cambridge’s share of the total is 1,000.

Don’t, however look for power-generating windmills on the local skyline, Grotheer said. Today’s technology doesn’t make them viable — yet.

“This area doesn’t have enough good wind,” he said.