Solar panels in Richmond, British Columbia

Richmond produces 990 kWh/kW annually. BC Hydro serves the area with full rebate eligibility: up to $5,000 for solar and battery rebate of up to $1,500 with solar (no Peak Saver), or up to $5,000 with Peak Saver enrollment, plus PST exemption (~$2,000 savings).

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

Until 1 July 2026 a Richmond 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 Richmond 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.

BC Hydro does not charge one price for electricity. Residential customers pay Step 1 at 11.87 cents per kilowatt-hour up to a threshold, and Step 2 at 14.08 cents for everything above it. That structure matters more for a solar decision than the average rate does.

Because solar reduces the total you draw from the grid, it removes kilowatt-hours from the top of your consumption — the Step 2 ones — first. A Richmond household that regularly runs into Step 2 is therefore displacing power at 14.08 cents. One that never leaves Step 1 displaces at 11.87. Two homes with identical arrays and identical production can save meaningfully different amounts for that reason alone.

It also means the first kilowatts of a system earn more than the last. Once generation has pulled you down out of Step 2, further output is displacing cheaper power, and anything beyond your own consumption is exported at BC Hydro’s fixed 10 cents rather than credited at retail.

Stack those two facts and the design conclusion is unavoidable. The most valuable portion of a Richmond system is the part that keeps you out of Step 2; the least valuable is the part that exports. That is the whole argument for sizing against twelve months of your own bills rather than against how many panels the roof will hold.

When you read a savings estimate, the question worth asking is which rate it assumed and for how many kilowatt-hours. An estimate that values every unit at 14.08 cents is describing a household permanently deep in Step 2, which most are not.

Richmond sits on the flat delta of the Fraser, and that changes the shape of the solar assessment compared with most of the province.

In Squamish or North Vancouver the limiting factor is often terrain: a ridge removes a block of the afternoon and there is nothing to be done about it. Richmond has no such constraint. What obstructs a roof here is a neighbouring building, a stand of trees, or occasionally the house’s own roof geometry — dormers, chimneys, a taller wing casting onto a lower one.

That difference is practical rather than academic, for two reasons. First, these obstructions are far easier to model accurately: a surveyor or a decent site assessment can place a neighbouring roofline precisely, where terrain requires a horizon survey. Second, some of them change. A tree can be pruned. A neighbour’s redevelopment can add shade you did not have, which is worth thinking about if you are next to a lot zoned for something taller than what stands on it now.

The flatness also means Richmond’s own figure of 990 kWh per kW a year is a more reliable guide to your address than the equivalent number is in a mountain town. The intra-city spread here is driven by roof orientation and immediate obstructions rather than by which part of the city you live in — Steveston and Brighouse are not meaningfully different from one another in solar terms.

So the assessment to insist on in Richmond is a careful look at what stands around the house, now and plausibly in a few years, rather than a horizon survey.

• View Solar Panel Pricing →
• Check Available Rebates →
• British Columbia Solar Overview →