Solar panels in Chilliwack, British Columbia

Chilliwack at the eastern end of the Fraser Valley produces 1,050 kWh/kW – better than metro Vancouver. BC Hydro rebates (up to $5,000 for solar plus battery rebate (up to $1,500 without Peak Saver, or up to $5,000 with Peak Saver)) and PST exemption apply.

Note: The federal Canada Greener Homes Grant and Loan programs are now closed.

Until 1 July 2026 a Chilliwack homeowner faced a genuine decision: take BC Hydro’s solar rebate, or stay on 1:1 net metering and bank every exported kilowatt-hour at full retail value. That decision no longer exists. Following a BC Utilities Commission ruling, BC Hydro closed the net metering rate (Rate Schedule 1289) to new customers on 1 July 2026.

New systems go on Rate Schedule 2289 instead. BC Hydro buys your excess generation at a fixed 10 cents per kWh, and — a real improvement on the old arrangement — pays you every billing cycle rather than banking credits until a yearly reconciliation. Because retail electricity in Chilliwack costs more than 10 cents, a kilowatt-hour you use yourself is now worth more than one you export. That makes the shape of your daily consumption matter in a way it did not before: running the dishwasher at noon rather than at midnight is now worth something.

Take the rebate. Declining it no longer preserves 1:1 net metering, because that rate is closed to new customers regardless. BC Hydro’s own position is that the solar rebate is expected to fully offset the impact of the rate change for an average residential customer. One distinction worth knowing: if you accept only the battery rebate and no solar rebate, your service rate is unaffected. BC Hydro also does not permit a pro-rated or combined arrangement across the two rates — it is one or the other.

Chilliwack is modelled at 1,050 kWh per kW a year. Across the BC Hydro-served cities on this site that is the strongest figure anywhere in the Lower Mainland — ahead of Langley and Vancouver at 1,010, Surrey at 1,000, Richmond at 990, Burnaby at 980 and North Vancouver at 960.

The mechanism is straightforward. The marine layer that sits over the coast for much of the year thins as you move east up the Fraser Valley, so Chilliwack sees more direct sun and fewer overcast days than Vancouver does. Its warm, dry summers are the visible part of the same pattern.

But it is worth being honest about the size of the advantage: about four per cent against Vancouver, and about nine per cent against North Vancouver. On an 8 kW system four per cent is a few hundred kilowatt-hours a year. It is real, and it is not the thing that will decide whether solar suits your house.

What will decide it is the roof — orientation, pitch, and what shades it in October when the sun sits low. A south-facing Burnaby roof will comfortably outproduce a west-facing Chilliwack one despite the regional figures pointing the other way.

So treat the Chilliwack advantage as a small tailwind rather than a reason in itself. Where it genuinely helps is at the margin: a roof that is borderline at 980 may be worth doing at 1,050, and that is a real difference for households whose only usable roof plane is imperfect.

The rules changed in British Columbia this year, and they changed in a direction that rewards a particular kind of household.

BC Hydro closed its 1:1 net metering rate, Rate Schedule 1289, to new customers on 1 July 2026 following a BC Utilities Commission decision. New self-generation customers take Rate Schedule 2289, under which BC Hydro buys excess generation at a fixed 10 cents per kilowatt-hour, paid each billing cycle rather than once a year. Meanwhile you buy electricity back at 11.87 cents on Step 1 and 14.08 cents on Step 2.

So the arithmetic now has two prices in it. A kilowatt-hour you generate and use in the same moment saves you 11.87 or 14.08 cents. The same kilowatt-hour exported earns 10. The difference is not enormous, but it applies to every exported unit for the life of the system, and it flips the old advice on its head: under 1:1 the grid was effectively a free battery and a bigger array was simply better, whereas now a system built past your own consumption gives the surplus away at a discount.

For Chilliwack that points at three things. Size against twelve months of your own bills rather than the roof. Move what load you can into daylight — laundry, dishwasher, car charging, pool pump — because self-consumed generation is worth up to 40 per cent more than exported generation. And treat battery storage as a question worth pricing properly rather than dismissing, since every stored kilowatt-hour you later use is worth the gap between 10 cents and what you would otherwise pay.

Existing net metering customers are not affected immediately; that is covered in the questions below.

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