Solar panels in Prince George, British Columbia

Prince George has better solar production (1,100 kWh/kW) than most coastal cities despite being further north – the interior’s drier climate more than compensates. Long summer days (17+ hours in June) boost seasonal production significantly. BC Hydro rebates and PST exemption apply.

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

Until 1 July 2026 a Prince George 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 Prince George 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.

Prince George sits several degrees of latitude north of Vancouver, and it is modelled to produce about nine per cent more solar electricity per kilowatt installed — 1,100 kWh per kW a year against 1,010.

That surprises people, because latitude is the intuitive variable. It is the wrong one to fixate on in British Columbia. What actually separates a good solar location from a mediocre one at these latitudes is how much of the daylight arrives as direct sun rather than being scattered by cloud, and on that measure the northern interior beats the south coast comfortably. Prince George has cold, clear winters and warm summers; the Lower Mainland has a marine layer for a good part of the year.

The same logic runs through the whole province. Kamloops, in the semi-arid interior, is modelled at 1,250 — the highest of any BC Hydro city on this site, and well ahead of Victoria’s 1,040 despite Victoria being far to the south and famously mild.

Where latitude does assert itself is in the shape of the year rather than its total. Prince George summers are long and productive; December days are short and low-angled. Output is therefore concentrated into the warmer half of the year more sharply than on the coast, and a northern household’s consumption tends to run the other way.

That matters more than it used to. Since BC Hydro moved new customers onto a fixed 10-cent export price in July 2026, a large summer surplus is worth less than it was under 1:1 net metering — so the seasonal mismatch has a price attached to it now, and sizing to your own consumption is the sensible response.

Two things about a Prince George winter affect a solar system, and they pull in opposite directions.

The helpful one is temperature. Photovoltaic panels lose efficiency as they heat up and gain it as they cool, so a bright cold day is close to ideal operating conditions. A clear February afternoon at minus fifteen converts light more efficiently than a hazy July afternoon at thirty. This is a genuine advantage of a continental climate and it partly offsets the shorter winter days.

The unhelpful one is snow. A panel covered in snow produces nothing, and at this latitude accumulation is a real design consideration rather than an afterthought. Steeper roof pitches shed more readily; panels shed faster than shingles once any sun reaches them, because the surface warms and the snow slides. A shallow-pitched array can hold snow for considerably longer.

The practical implications are worth raising with an installer before the design is fixed. What is the roof pitch, and does it favour shedding? Is the array laid out so that a slab of snow sliding off lands somewhere sensible rather than on a walkway or a gas meter? And what does the production estimate assume about winter months — an estimate built on a generic provincial profile may not reflect the snow loss a Prince George roof actually sees.

None of this argues against solar here. At 1,100 kWh per kW the annual resource is better than the coast. It argues for a design that treats winter as a known condition rather than as a rounding error.

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