Solar panels in Kamloops, British Columbia

Kamloops rivals Alberta for sunshine with 1,250 kWh/kW production – the highest of any BC Hydro-served city. The Thompson Valley’s semi-arid climate creates excellent solar conditions year-round. BC Hydro rebates ($5,000 for solar; battery rebate up to $1,500 without Peak Saver, or up to $5,000 with Peak Saver) and PST exemption apply. Combined with interior sunshine, Kamloops offers some of the best solar ROI in British Columbia.

Beginning June 1, 2026, installations must be completed by an HPCN member to qualify for rebates.

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

Until 1 July 2026 a Kamloops 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 Kamloops 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.

Kamloops is modelled at 1,250 kWh per kW a year. Among the sixteen BC Hydro-served cities on this site, nothing else comes close: Victoria, the best on the coast, is 1,040, Vancouver is 1,010, Surrey and Courtenay are 1,000, and North Vancouver is 960.

That is a gap of about 25 per cent against Vancouver and 30 per cent against North Vancouver. Put concretely, an 8 kW system in Kamloops produces roughly what a 10 kW system produces on the Lower Mainland — the same annual output from two fewer kilowatts of equipment, which is a real saving on installed cost as well as roof area.

The reason is the semi-arid interior climate. Kamloops sits in a rain shadow with hot, dry summers and far less of the marine cloud that sits over the coast for much of the year. It is closer in solar terms to southern Alberta than to Vancouver, and its figure is within a few per cent of Calgary’s.

The consequence for a homeowner here is that the roof constraint binds less tightly. A modest, partly obstructed or awkwardly oriented roof that would struggle to justify itself in Burnaby can still support a worthwhile system in Kamloops, because each square metre works harder. Households with limited south-facing area have more room to compromise on orientation and still land on a sensible result.

What the sunshine does not do is make the payback short by national standards. At 8 to 12 years Kamloops is the quickest in British Columbia, but that is still slower than most of Ontario — and the reason is not the sun, it is what the province pays for the power you generate.

Kamloops produces more per kilowatt installed than every city we serve in Ontario — 1,250 kWh per kW against 1,210 for Chatham-Kent, Ontario’s best. And yet the payback here is 8 to 12 years while Chatham-Kent’s is 7 to 10. Two things explain the gap, and neither is weather.

The first is the rebate. Ontario’s Home Renovation Savings Program pays up to $10,000 for solar panels and battery storage together. British Columbia has no residential equivalent of that size, so a Kamloops system starts closer to full price. That difference alone is worth several years of payback on a typical installation.

The second is what your generation is worth. Ontario credits exports at the full retail rate under net metering, and its on-peak rate is 20.3 cents. In British Columbia, BC Hydro closed its 1:1 net metering rate to new customers on 1 July 2026 following a BC Utilities Commission decision; new self-generation customers take Rate Schedule 2289, under which exports are bought at a fixed 10 cents per kilowatt-hour and paid each billing cycle rather than once a year. You buy power back at 11.87 cents on Step 1 and 14.08 on Step 2.

So an exported kilowatt-hour in Kamloops is worth 10 cents, while the same kilowatt-hour consumed at home saves you 11.87 or 14.08. That asymmetry is the single most important design fact in British Columbia now, and it points at one conclusion: size the system against your own twelve-month consumption rather than against the roof, because in Kamloops the roof will almost always allow more than the arithmetic justifies.

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