“BC Hydro’s Net-Metering customers are some of the most creative and committed when it comes to developing innovative projects to offset their electrical load….[they] can generate their own electricity to meet their needs and sell any excess energy back to BC Hydro.”
— Chelsea Watt, bchydro.com Feb. 1, 2013
BC Hydro launched its net-metering program in 2004 and the initiative now allows individual “residential and small commercial customers” to provide the utility with up to 100 kilowatts of power from “clean and renewable energy sources.”
Those sources can be solar, micro-hydro, wind turbines and other approved systems.
As applied to a solar photovoltaic installation, net-metering allows BC Hydro’s transmission grid to offset the energy it receives from the system against the power it sends to the home.
Once the solar PV system is built and running, power from natural light is free and Hydro will pay 9.9 cents per kWh for the excess power it receives. Depending on the home’s annual electricity consumption, the year-end inflow-outflow reconciliation will result in a much lower Hydro bill or even a small cheque.
By November 2014, the net-metering program had 371 customers delivering a total of two megawatts of energy to the grid, 80 per cent of which was from solar energy.
One of Hydro’s committed customers is North Vancouver resident Doug Horn who had a 1,050-watt, six-panel solar array installed on the roof of his 650-square-foot home.
In 2006, the all-in cost of Horn’s small system was approximately $15,000. Lower prices in 2013 gave Dawson Creek resident Don Pettit a five-kW system for just $17,000. (You can see Pettit’s numbers by searching “pettit: my solar year” at alaskahighwaynews.ca.)
Back in North Vancouver, Horn’s older home near Grand Boulevard fits neatly into the theme of my last column on small homes and could not have been better suited to a solar energy project.
Horn, who says he’s a technical person at heart, purchased his home in 2003 and set about making it as energy-efficient as possible.
“During my research into how different types of PV systems worked, I realized it would be a good idea for me to reduce my power usage before having one installed and hooked up to BC Hydro’s grid,” he told me last week.
Commitment made, old power-hungry appliances were replaced by energy-efficient ones and incandescent lightbulbs and switches gave way to dimmable LED lighting and other energy-saving alternatives.
“From my research, I had hoped to install a solar system that would offset my electricity usage by about 33 per cent,” Horn said.
Instead, after he went ahead with the project, he was surprised to find that taking those important preliminary steps had enabled his solar array to offset 100 per cent of the electrical usage in his small home.
If you’re unfamiliar with solar power and net-metering terminology, here’s what I’ve discovered, largely from BC Hydro, Vancouver Renewable Energy Corp.’s Rob Baxter— the company Horn commissioned to install his system — and from Horn himself.
A complete solar PV system consists of rack-mounted solar panels that convert daylight to direct current, an inverter that converts DC power to alternating current for the home, and breaker switches.
“A nominal one-kilowatt array of solar panels requires about 70 square feet of roof space,” said Baxter.
“That generates roughly 1,100 kilowatt hours of energy per year and offsets about 10 per cent of the energy use in an average B.C. home,” he explained.
That said, as Horn’s system demonstrates, “average” doesn’t always do justice to the opportunities.
The potential for solar energy is boundless, so let’s dream about possibilities:
The current net-metering program is encouraging but expanding it could go well beyond Hydro’s current plans to include leased systems.
How many kilowatts could be sent to Hydro if municipalities were to require solar systems on all new construction? How many kilowatts if provincial policies were changed?
A $15,000-$20,000 installed cost for a PV system is enough to turn away many would-be customers — especially when added to the cost of repairing an old roof to prepare it for the panels.
But what if the provincial government stopped siphoning $600 million a year out of BC Hydro and allowed those dollars to be used to fund a 40 to 50 per cent grant to homeowners and businesses who build 5-6 kW solar systems? Would we see upwards of 60,000 more net-metering customers?
Now that would really be a Power Smart thing to do.
Last December, Premier Christy Clark gave the go-ahead to the $8.8-billion Site C project.
Bypassing the BC Utilities Commission and ignoring the mounting provincial debt; heedless of First Nations’ lawsuits; oblivious to the fact that hundreds of homes and thousands of acres of prime farmland will be flooded, or that $8.8 billion is just today’s dubious cost estimate, Clark wants her name on that dam, dammit!
But what if saner heads prevailed?
How many job-creating solar installations throughout B.C. would it take to offset Site C production?
Think what a leader Clark would be if she spent just a fraction of that $8.8 billion to discover the answer.
Dream on, Lizzie, dream on.
Elizabeth James can be reached via email at: [email protected]
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