From the YIMBY files, Toronto’s Portlands Energy Centre is providing some waterfront property to the University of Toronto as part of a plan to build a multi-million-dollar solar park that would supply clean electricity to the province’s grid and double as a research site.

According to the Toronto Star, Arise Technologies Inc., a partner in the project, has agreed to design and construct the facility by early 2009 at a cost of between $5 million and $8 million. The proposed system would, on sunny days, generate between 500 kilowatts and one megawatt of electricity, enough to power a few hundred homes.

And while the project will also add a much-needed touch of green to the 550-megawatt, natural gas-fired generating plant currently under construction in the port-lands area, one politician was quoted as saying,

The plant is inefficient and will create environmental problems that will overwhelm the green benefits of one megawatt of solar energy.