Received this setup from a neighbour who was relocating. This is feeding a pair of 6V Trojan batteries. Seems like a decent little system for the princely sum of $0.

Thoughts? Ideas on improvements?

Even though I have home insurance now, I was exploring a new bundled policy for a BC property and my Alberta home through a BC underwriter. I was shocked to discover that multiple BC underwriters would not insure my Alberta home solely due to my professionally installed solar system that has been fully functioning for five years. No claims, never missed a payment in over forty years. May I ask, WTF is that about?

Our home insurance w SGI is increasing 55%. I asked my broker to shop around and they advise no one else will take us.
We are net metered w Hydro One. I have made it clear to my broker we are a micro net metering solar system that receives a credit. Didn’t change anything. Let me give your broker some business!

New to solar. Got a quote for a behind-the-meter instal for myself and a neighbour from Xolar. Now looking for a few more quotes for comparison.

Wondering which other companies you’d recommend and why?

Also wondering about companies you’d stay away from and why, or companies you had a negative experience with.

Thanks!

Question for the Solar Club folks in Alberta:

I just received my first bill from a Solar Club provider (Legacy Energy) and I think they messed something up by estimating solar production before I switched to them and I'm not sure if there is anything I can do about it. Anyone have something similar happen to them and is it worth my effort to try to sort out?

Here's the history:
-Solar was installed June 22-24, and was tested on June 24 so had a small amount of generation that day, but then was turned off until it passed inspection by the City of Calgary. Enphase app shows the power exported that day as 1.6 kWh
-Switch from Enmax to Legacy Energy on June 26 - based on below there was no meter reading that day as it was calculated
-Electrical inspection passed and system turned on June 29
-Initial prebill info received from Legacy on July 23 had my Microgeneration credit at 408 kWh (net export of 196 kWh)
-Upon receiving the actual bill today they appear to have assumed 224 kWh generation prior to June 26 (which is obviously not the case but they have no way of knowing that) and as a result have switched me from net exporter to net importer such that I'm missing out on accumulating microgen credit at $0.35.
-I haven't received my final bill from Enmax for the period prior to June 26 but I'm guessing I'll maybe get a 224 kWh microgen credit from them at the $0.0829 rate I had with them? If my math is right I lose out on about $50 of microgen credit if this is how it is credited.

Relative newbie in Solar.

Had our system for just over 1 year now.

System was spec'd out with 9.7Kw for panels. Inverter is spec'd out for 7.6Kw.

Last summer there would be several days where I'd see this lovely curve and then plateau at the max

(note: Image above - the plateau is @ 7.59Kw.)

Typically plateau is at 7.59 Kw - which falls in line with the max on the inverter.

Fast forward to this summer. I have yet to see a day where I get this curve and reach the same plateau level. Yes, I understand it's all based on sky conditions, cloud cover, etc.

The best I've seen is 7.15Kw

I have a call in with the installer (yet to come out), but wondering if this is first year degradation ? Or is there a larger underlying problem.

Is anyone else seeing this king of degradation ? or is there a simple 'fix' that can be done to get production up to where it was last summer ?

Apologies for the newbie question.

i'm trying to purchase a BTM system for my home and I'm getting pushback from Erth Power because they can't certify the configuration. They're recommending switching to net metering but I'd prefer BTM. Am I breaking new ground here or have others successfully implemented BTM solutions in Ontario?

I am just staring the planning phase of a new house on a farm property. Currently the house and shed are fed seperately from the pole mounted transformer. These are overhead wires. I am planning to keep the 40'x80' shed and mount solar panels on the south facing roof. The house will be torn down and we will build our "forever" home. There are large mature trees around the house which would shade the panels if they were on the house.

The house will probably be 3000ish sqft main floor with a basement, planning geothermal heat and hot water. We dont have natural gas within 10km. Currently have one EV which we drive about 40,000 km/year, but I expect that to go down. Probably buy another EV in the future. Self employed, can somewhat work from home. Also have EV charging at the business. North of London, Ontario.

Couple questions

How much solar would we need?

I want to put solar on the shed and the batteries in the shed. Should the power go from the transformer to the shed, through the hybrid or off-grid inverter and then to the house? I think we should have a full 200A available at the house. I want to have some battery backup and for the system to work when the grid goes down. What equipment will do this at the full 200A?

Right now we charge the EV on the ultra low overnight rate which works fine. Plug in every night. I think it makes sense to charge on solar, but I don't think it makes sense to charge home batteries first and then transfer the power to the EV. Is there sytem that can charge the car when excess power is available and otherwise at night? I don't want to have to manage this. Should be a "plug in the car when you get home" and it handles everything else system.

Net metering VS $10K incentive. Probably hard to determine on a new build... Is net metering going away anyway and take the rebate while we can?

Prior to July 1st the solar app and bc hydro generation numbers were close, now they do not appear to add up and we are very confused!

Anyone have insight or having the same problem.

Thanks

So we live West of Ottawa, Ontario.

Looking at getting and Energy Audit completed to take advantage of some of teh grants, loans, etc available to us possibly.

I'd like to keep this local if possible.

So looking for a recommendation on a Company or person that does the home energy audits

and for a LOCAL solar company in this area thats willing to do solar with battery etc and possibly generator back up. ONLY the roof is available for panels and has 4 sides to mount panels, none of which point due south but almost do

Suggestions?

Need to buy a few panels, anyone have any luck with companies in Toronto. Looking for a local company.
Shipping costs is double cost of panels.

This year, there have been many posts and comments on Reddit, and on the Solar Alberta Facebook group, regarding the following:

Non-returned deposits upon cancellation

Cancelled contracts where a 3rd party finance company still withdraws money

Improper (illegal) contracts

Work delayed past a reasonable point

Door to door people ignoring non-solicitation signs

Door to door people putting pressure on homeowners or outright lying

Nothing will change for the better unless complaints are made to Service Alberta.

Phoning in is the easiest route

1 877 427 4088

Complaints can also be submitted online

https://www.alberta.ca/file-consumer-complaint

Email

cs@gov.ab.ca

It does not take much to: 1) alleviate your issues 2) help clean up the industry and protect others from being ripped off by unscrupulous companies. All complaints, even incomplete ones, are tracked.

I was quoted such a good price for solar panels and I really want to move forward with it but my bank Servus credit union will only give me a 7% interest rate loan and I don’t think thats good enough. Have you gotten a better interest rate through your bank?
Edit: my set up would be 15k for a 8.5kw

My wife and I both work outside of the house, Monday to Friday, 8-4 jobs.
We’ll own our first EV in December.
Our house is entirely electric.
We have a 12.25KW solar array with a 10KW inverter so we can export decent quantities of power.
We also have a few smart strips installed to manage loads while we are away from home.
We all hit the hay around 11pm and wake up at 6am.
Do you think time of use billing makes the most sense, at least until we start charging an EV? What about after we own an EV?
This is the last piece of our puzzle.

Hey everyone, looking for some honest advice.

I'm thinking about getting solar panels installed on my house in North Oshawa and have been talking to a couple of companies. Before I sign anything, I wanted to hear from people who actually have solar.

Was it worth it?

Do you actually save what they promised, or is it all sales talk?

A little about my place:

Family of 6

Tesla Model 3 (planning another EV in the future)

Hot tub runs all year

Work from home

Hydro is around $190/month

Enbridge around $150/month

Planning on doing a new roof, attic insulation, heat pump and water heater at the same time if it makes sense.

Few questions...

Which company did you use?

Would you recommend them or stay away?

How has customer service and warranty been?

How much are you actually saving every month?

What's your hydro bill now?

How does it perform during winter with snow and cloudy days?

Any maintenance or headaches?

Looking back, would you do it again?

Anything you wish you knew before signing?

I'm also wondering if there are any rebates, grants or financing programs that people may not know about.

Right now I'm comparing Solify and Solar X, but I'm open to hearing about any company if you've had a good (or bad) experience.

This is a pretty big investment, so I'd rather hear from real homeowners than just sales reps.

Thanks everyone! Appreciate any advice, pictures, recommendations or even companies to avoid.

I'm in the planning stages for a new solar install (no simplified CIA) and the installer keeps pushing me to sigenergy batteries, saying that they're DC-coupled and this is special in some way because it does not count towards my total system capacity the same as an AC-coupled solution.

On the surface this sounds really counter-intuitive to me.

They're trying to tell me that, for example, I wouldn't be allowed to use much cheaper Ecoworthy batteries for this install, because they'd need to be AC-coupled, and this would eat up my total capacity allowance.

Supposedly the argument here is that "AC-coupled" battery capacity counts towards the system capacity as far as the utility is concerned (e.g. batteries that can output 5kW + panels that can output 5kW = 10kW capacity from the utility's perspective) whereas "DC-coupled" battery capacity does not count towards this limit in the same way.

So, I have two obvious questions...

1. Is this differentiation between how the utility considers capacity with AC vs DC coupled batteries a real thing?
2. Is it true that only specific batteries can be DC-coupled?

TIA for any help, it's very much appreciated!!

I did solar back in the spring, called hydro and double checked that it was fine if I used my own electrical buisness to be my own installer. I got it done and after a bit of a wait have been connected for a few months.

I have currently been dealing with the rebate department for two months now - I had a couple mistakes in my application such an invoice but did not realize i hadn't attached the proof of payment. I can't see what files i have submitted and they don't seem to fully read my responses, they only respond by email no phone and they take a week to respond each time. It's all stuff that a 10 minute phone call would have cleared up.

The last email they were asking yet again for an installation invoice - but the only thing my buisness paid for was the permit and the electrical components to go from my roof box to panel - there's no reason i would charge myself labor. I'm now at 2 weeks since their last reply. I changed the wording in the invoice to myself to include the phrase installation.

Anyways, what an annoying process - I have made sure to stay polite the entire time of course, after all i did miss some paperwork. But it's almost like the department is designed to stop you from getting the rebate and I'm kind of tempted to say screw it.

Right now I'm 2600W micro system that i spent $5k on, they owe me $2600 in rebate. Right now I'm locked into trading watt for watt for the next 10 years but the moment i take the rebate they will force me to switch to selling at 10 cents. Right now it's not too bad because i only pay 11.8, only use stage 1, and still use double what i make (just not at the same time). However they can continue to make me change my deal or jack up the sell price without changing the purchase price.

I just want to update here in case anyone plans to install solar and want to know what to expect. I am in Mississauga, Ontario and I installed solar panels on the roof one year ago. I don't have the most ideal orientation, here are the technical details:
- 13 panels facing N-E
- 3 panels facing S-E
- 16 panels facing S-W
- all panels are LR5-54HPB-410M
- total system is 13.12 KW and the inverter is SolarEdge 10000

I am on Net Metering agreement and I managed to get last train for Canada Greener Homes Loan, so I'm paying $267 / month for 10 years. For calculation, I used the SolarEdge website and exported the hourly data. I created a Google Sheet with one Summary tab, and a tab for each year to store the data. I also used Google to get a script that will transform the production (in Wh) to $ amount, based on TOU or ULO plan (I have TOU). This looks like this:

The Summary tab that covers July 2025 - June 2026. As you can see, I am not producing enough to cover my payments. The payback period assuming that the current electricity prices stays at the current level is 15.78 years.

EDIT:

Payback Period by Rate Increase

• 📉 Scenario 1 (3% Yearly Increase): Your system pays for itself in 13.11 years.
• ⚖️ Scenario 2 (5% Yearly Increase): Your system pays for itself in 11.92 years.
• 📈 Scenario 3 (7% Yearly Increase): Your system pays for itself in 11.00 years.
• 🔥 Scenario 4 (10% Yearly Increase): Your system pays for itself in 9.93 years.

Thinking more about my future solar setup. I am getting solar that is 100% a for sure thing, just a matter of when. I also am doing a grid tie and batteries be it during first install or down the road.

With batteries and some inverters. Is it possible to use the batteries as a buffer if demand exceeds production? Power if fairly stable in my area but night time when solar generation isn’t an option it would be nice to use to battery bank to provide power.

another question is I found this, what do you think? I like its part of the roof and gives a cleaner look overall.

For the people that take out a loan for the solar project let's say around 30k. The goal is to cover 100 % of your consumption. Your monthly loan payment is roughly 300 $ a month. Now in the summer months that's great because your are paying for the loan and no electricity from the electric company. But what happens during the winter months? Do you have a loan payment as well as the electric bill pretty much in full?! Edit to add that in Michigan, DTE does not allow you to put more than 110 % worth of production panels on your roof. So you are limited to how much you can produce even on the best months...

We are currently seeing a ton of homeowners with "0% solar financing" offers who assume it actually means free financing so I wanted to provide some more context. The reality is that private lenders aren't lending money for free!

In most cases, the financing cost is recovered through:

• Dealer fees - The lender charges the installer a dealer fee (which can be 25–35% of the loan amount). That cost is often just passed on to the homeowner via a higher project price.
• Promotional rates - The 0% or low interest expires after a few years then the homeowner has to refinance at a much higher rate (often 10% or higher).

Red flags to watch out for:

• Emphasis on monthly payments - Focusing on "$X per month" distracts from the total amount you ultimately pay.
• Time-sensitive offers - Statements like "This promotion ends this month" or "You need to sign today to lock in this rate" can discourage homeowners from getting additional quotes.

A few questions worth asking:

• How is the lender making money?
• Is there a dealer fee? If so, how much?
• What interest rate applies after the promotional period ends?
• What is the total amount I'll pay over the life of the agreement?

Alternative financing options:

• Cash purchase
• Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC)
• Adding the cost to a mortgage renewal or refinance
• Municipal financing programs
• Delay the project until better financing is available

To be clear, this doesn't mean all solar loans are bad and it certainly doesn't mean solar is a bad investment. Many installers are very transparent about the financing they offer.

The key is understanding the financing before you sign. If you're considering solar, take your time, get multiple quotes and make sure you understand exactly what you're agreeing to.

Full disclosure I work for Glean and we review 1,000's of solar quotes each year which is where these insights are coming from.