Solar panels in Surrey, British Columbia

Surrey, BC’s second-largest city, is served by BC Hydro with production of 1,000 kWh/kW. Same rebate package as Vancouver: up to $5,000 solar + $5,000 battery from BC Hydro, plus PST exemption. With rate increases of 3.75% annually and growing residential development, solar adoption in Surrey is accelerating.

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 Surrey 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 Surrey 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.

Surrey’s housing stock lends itself to large systems. Cloverdale, South Surrey and Fleetwood have the roof area, and what Xolar has built here runs well above what a typical BC home puts up. Until the middle of 2026 there was little reason to hold back: under 1:1 net metering every surplus kilowatt-hour banked at full retail value, so a bigger array simply meant a bigger credit. That changed on 1 July 2026, when BC Hydro closed net metering to new customers and moved to a fixed export price of 10 cents per kWh. Surrey buys electricity back at 11.87 cents on the first step and 14.08 on the second. The gap is not enormous, but it applies to every exported kilowatt-hour for the life of the system, and a large array exports a great deal more than a small one. This is not an argument for a small system. It is an argument for a sized one — built against twelve months of your actual consumption rather than against the square metres available. Where the roof genuinely outruns the household, that is the point at which battery storage, or shifting heavy loads into daylight, starts paying for itself rather than simply sounding good.

Surrey’s larger homes tend to consume more, and that turns out to be an advantage under BC Hydro’s current rules.

Since 1 July 2026, when Rate Schedule 1289 closed to new customers, exported energy has been bought at a fixed 10 cents per kilowatt-hour under Rate Schedule 2289. Electricity is sold back at 11.87 cents on Step 1 and 14.08 on Step 2. The value of solar therefore depends heavily on how much of your own generation you consume rather than export — and a household with high consumption consumes a much larger share of it.

Put plainly: a big house with a heat pump, a hot tub and two cars on chargers will use most of what its array produces during daylight hours, capturing 11.87 to 14.08 cents on each of those kilowatt-hours. A small, low-consumption household with the same array exports far more of its production and receives 10 cents for it. The high-consumption home extracts more value from identical equipment.

That is why the sizing conversation in Surrey should start with twelve months of bills rather than with the roof, and why the answer here is often still a large system — not because the roof allows it, but because the consumption justifies it. At 1,000 kWh per kW a year with a payback of 11 to 13 years, the households that do best are the ones whose daytime demand lines up with production.

Where consumption genuinely does not use the output, storage or shifting loads into daylight is worth more than additional panels.

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