Home Solar in New Brunswick:

New Brunswick is a small province in eastern Canada. It is home to the cities of Moncton, Saint John and Fredericton, which is the capital. The official languages spoken are English and French.

New Brunswick’s provincial government policies favor solar rebates and incentives. In addition to rebates that help with upfront solar system costs, its net metering program makes it a favorable place for businesses and residents to invest in solar energy.

Solar Incentives

New Brunswick provides some solar energy rebates and incentives that help to reduce the overall cost of solar systems.

Our EnergyPal Advisors can help you navigate all of the solar incentives available in New Brunswick and also apply them to the available solar panel offerings.

Just remember these items:

• Per Watt Rebates

  Rebates in New Brunswick are given according to the size of your installed system, which is measured in watts. Watts is the measure of the potential output of your system, usually described in kilowatts.

• Rebate Applications

  We’ve screened our installation companies to make sure that they can and will handle all paperwork pertaining to rebates.

Rebates and Tax Breaks

The Total Home Energy Savings Program (THESP), which is administered by Energie NB Power, is the principal solar incentive in the province of New Brunswick. Residential property owners who belong to this incentive program can earn a cash rebate of $0.20 to $0.30 per watt depending on how many energy upgrades you install.

If you had a 9.08 kW system, your savings would look like this:

9080 watts x $0.30/watt = $2,724

So if you spent $20,000 on that system, your cost would go down to $17,276 after the rebate.

Other Energy Incentives

New Brunswick does offer some other incentives and rebates for residents who make their homes more energy efficient through THESP and also for those who purchase energy efficient new homes. There is also a Low Income Energy Savings Program that is not specific to solar energy, but still reduces consumption and pollution.

The Canadian federal government helps businesses to pay for their solar systems. It can abolish the first-year rule and achieve an accelerated Capital Cost Allowance (CCA) rate. For more information, visit the tax savings for industry portion of their website.

Utility Policies

Utility policy factors determine what your utility provider pays you for the excess power you produce and what you save on your power bill by reducing electricity usage. New Brunswick gets a medium score for utility policies.

Interconnection Policy

One important policy for solar customers is called Net Metering. Net Metering is a billing mechanism that allows solar customers to push electricity to the grid for credit that can be used later, like at night when your solar panels aren’t generating power. This incentivizes people to go solar, provides clean energy for others to use and prevents waste.

Some provinces have poorer net metering policies than others, meaning that credits may not be able to be rolled over to the next month or year, or that you don’t earn full watt-for-watt credit for your excess energy.

New Brunswick’s Net Metering program is good. Credits can be carried over into the next month, and you can connect a system up to 100 kW in size. Your credits expire in March every year.

Solar Setup Fees

New Brunswick’s program charges you about $500 for an interconnection study. Other provinces do not carry this fee.

Electricity Prices

Electricity prices in New Brunswick are on the low end. Usually you don’t want high prices, but with solar, the higher the prices, the more you save, and the more economical a solar system becomes.

The average total cost of electricity in New Brunswick is $0.127 per kWh, including fixed and variable costs, and assuming a monthly usage of 1,000 kWh. Under similar assumptions, the Canadian national average for all provinces is $0.135 per kWh.

Rate Design

Rate designs are comprised of monthly fees and either a flat or tiered rate you pay for electricity. Good rate designs, which save you money when you conserve energy, are tiered and have low fixed monthly fees. Poor rate designs have flat rates and high fixed monthly fees.

New Brunswick is below average when it comes to the quality of its electricity bill rate design. It has flat rates but moderate fixed fees (around $20 per month).

You still pay fixed monthly fees when you go solar because you are still tied to the grid. Being tied to the grid is a good thing, because otherwise you might not have power at night or if your system stopped working suddenly. Even if you go off of the grid and rely on a battery source, the high cost of the battery would not outweigh the low monthly fee and the savings obtained from a net billing program.

PACE Programs

PACE stands for Property Assessed Clean Energy and is a financing program for solar projects that is tied to the home instead of the homeowner. The PACE program is not available in New Brunswick.

Other Energy Financing

Solar systems can be financed by bank loans, solar installer financing, new home mortgages, energy loans and home equity loans or lines of credit. Cash works too. Talk to your EnergyPal Advisor about financing solar options in New Brunswick. We regularly source the best deals and terms for customers.