Local firm ships first of 20 electrical houses

Mark Ribble

Leamington Post
On Friday, November 11, the first of many electrical houses built by EnerQuest Services left the building.
The 48-foot 'house' will contain the electrical system responsible for storing and collecting electricity from a solar farm near Napanee, Ontario. The equipment within the house will collect, convert and distribute the electricity generated from the solar panels and get it to the power lines.
Enerquest designed and built the house and has plans for 19 more in the next couple of months.
Company President, Bill Parr, says they have hired 15 people in the last six weeks, as a direct result of green energy.
"This is the first house supplied under the government feed-in-tariff rules," he said.
Parr's crew was working endless hours the last few weeks to get this project finished in time for shipping on Friday afternoon.
Ten such electrical houses collect the power for each solar farm. In comparison, a wind farm only requires one house. The solar farms are usually 90-100 acres in size.
For Parr, this latest project is a boon for an already-growing business that he began nine years ago in his garage. They are now in a 30,000 square foot building and more expansion is planned.
EnerQuest won an innovation award in the annual Leamington Business Excellence awards in 2007.

They are the only company in Ontario building the houses from start to finish, and only one of two in the entire country. Other companies are building components, but EnerQuest designs and builds the houses on site.

They get their steel from Atlas Tube, powder painting from their neighbours at Uni-Fab and spray coatings from Spray Tech out of Wheatley.
The initial order was secured in July and it generally takes between 18 and 22 weeks to build each house. Parr is hoping for a lot more orders. There are 40 solar farms launching in 2012, which surely means more orders.
"We may have many more down the road," he said.  To read more go to www.leamingtonpostandshopper.com.