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The Canadian Solar Industry Association now counts 263 corporate members, mostly in Ontario. Even as Ontario winds down its feed-in-tariff (at present Ontario is signing contracts to buy solar and wind for 29¢ kWh ), the solar industry is exporting Canadian know-how to the world.

“The Green Energy Act established a solar industry in Canada,” says John Gorman, president of the solar industry group. “We have grown a globally recognized solar industry.”

The Honduras plan is a sign of how far Ontario’s solar expertise can reach. “We are going to try to take their packaging plants, irrigation systems and port off the grid,” says Gerry De Luca, the founder and vice-president of sales at Ozz Clean Energy. “They have 800 containers a day that need to be chilled. And they use diesel to chill them.”

The logistics are tricky — Honduras is a very dangerous place.

“We had armed guards who stayed with us, even in the hotels at night,” says De Luca of his recent visit to the Central American nation.

The Dole project is not a done deal. Paul Maloney, Ozz’s U.S. partner at Renova Capital Partners, notes in an email somewhat obliquely that, “we’re in a feasibility mode with a significant holistic multi-operational energy management approach and bringing a cross-disciplinary technology optimization exercise to their diverse horizontally and vertically integrated operations.”

Muzzo took other kinds of risks in solar’s early days in Ontario. “In 2010, I was all-in with a deuce and a seven, unsuited,” he recalls. “It was a significant investment with a considerable risk and it has worked out well.”