Nova Scotia

With 85% of Nova Scotia’s electricity coming from high carbon sources, they’ve been looking for an environmentally friendly way to power their province for quite some time. That time has finally arrived, as the government has put incentives in place to give Nova Scotians a path towards an environmentally responsible energy future.

Today, Nova Scotia is the best province in the country for installing a solar power system due to the lucrative rebates, financing options, and low installation costs. Nova Scotia wants to be completely carbon free by 2040. You can help make this happen and only save money in the mean time.

There are several ways to get solar here. No matter which option you choose, you’ll be able to take advantage of the same incentives, they will just be applied in different ways. Our Solar Recommendation System is set up in order to be able to find the perfect option for your house. The best panels, the best location, the best savings program. Every bit is included.
For solar, the goal is to generate exactly enough power to cover your own electricity needs. If you produce less than your total usage with solar, you have to pay for extra power. If you overproduce, you save less.
Below is a breakdown of the reasons to go solar in Nova Scotia.

Going solar means two things: Generating your power from a clean, renewable energy source AND saving money. This is done through a process called net-metering. Net-metering is the method where your home solar system is connected to your electric meter, which sends the excess energy from the solar panels to the grid when you aren’t using it.

Nova Scotia is based off of an annual net-metering program.  Your utility tracks the extra electricity you produce, and you get to use the same amount later. If you produce the same amount of power that you use over the whole year, your electric costs are covered.

Keeping it simple, you need a system that covers your average yearly electricity usage. If you don’t produce all of your electricity from solar, you have to buy the extra power from your utility. If you overproduce, your utility company will treat you like a tiny power plant and pay you at the wholesale rate of power. You pay the retail rate. Not economical.

Nova Scotia has tons of local incentives to help their community go green. The most prominent of these is Efficiency Nova Scotia’s SolarHomes program which cuts the overall cost of going solar by around 40%. We’ve developed our Solar Recommendation System to help track these incentives so that we can deliver the best solution to you.

To keep it simple, it usually works out to a rebate of $1.00 per watt installed for any solar system that is 10kW or less. As an example, for a 10kW system, the rebate would be $10,000.

These incentives are applied for purchasing and installing solar. Don’t have the money to buy solar? Let us figure it out for you.

Unlike other property renovations like a home extension or a basement remodeling, when you install solar it won’t impact the assessed value of your property. 

The benefit to this is that if you decide to sell your home, you still include the value of solar into your sale price!

What Now?

All things considered, the cost of going solar in Nova Scotia is the best it’s ever been. If you have the pocket change lying around, you can buy solar. If not, no problem. It’s possible to get into certain programs that will help you finance the system for as low as $600. 

If we can get you solar right away, we’ll tell you. If anything else can be done, we’ll help you with that to. Let’s start with solar.