Join The Solar Club

When I travel around our community, I notice hard-working solar panels on roofs everywhere.

According to SolarClub.ca, there are 189 solar-powered houses in Sherwood Park that are fully permitted and registered as micro-generators. There are also homeowners ready for solar panels to be installed that are waiting on FORTIS to approve their micro-generator status, which will enable them to export electricity to the grid and generate savings from their solar panels.

Of the Sherwood Park micro-generators, 108, or 57 per cent are members of the Solar Club. The Solar Club is a unique Alberta program that enables people exporting more electricity to the grid than they are importing (mostly, during the summer months) to get paid a high rate for the energy they generate. It provides Albertans with an opportunity to participate in the transition to a net-zero economy and maximize the return on investment from their solar panels.

The average number of panels on a solar powered house in Sherwood Park is 22. During the last 12 months, the micro-generators/solar powered houses in Sherwood Park (as members of the Solar Club) exported 500,000 kWh onto the grid from their solar power systems, enough to power an additional 60 Sherwood Park homes. They were also paid $111,000 by the Solar Club for their exports to the grid. This is in addition to the money they each saved using their own power generation directly before exporting surplus energy onto the grid.

Rooftops with solar panels installed above them are working hard to lower power bills and earn money for their owners. It is why I call roofs without solar panels, lazy roofs.

Some people in Sherwood Park have let me know that FORTIS is limiting the number of solar panels that can be installed on their roof because of the current micro-generator regulations.

When micro-generators export to the grid, the distribution and transmission (D&T) companies suffer a drop in revenue. In Alberta, much of the D&T charges we pay on our utility bills depends on how much electricity we import from the grid. When we reduce our energy consumption or add solar panels that export electricity to the grid, D&T companies like FORTIS lose money. Our electricity grid is currently designed to reward D&T companies for our consumption of electricity instead of energy conservation.

Given that there are currently over 23,000 micro-generator sites in Alberta and we are in the early days of solar power adoption, we need to review Alberta’s micro-generator regulations to make sure we can install as many solar panels as possible and D&T businesses like FORTIS get fairly compensated, even when our solar panels are exporting electricity to the grid.

I am pro-grid and pro-solar. I want to stay connected to the amazing electrical services provided by businesses like FORTIS. I also want to reduce my carbon footprint and export solar energy to the grid for my neighbours to use. The incentives for FORTIS and other D&T businesses need to be aligned with our provincial goal to have a net-zero economy by 2050.