What a Burnaby roof produces, and when
Natural Resources Canada models Burnaby at about 990 kWh a year per kW of installed panel capacity on a well oriented array. Multiply by the system size for a first estimate: a 5 kW array is near 5,000 kWh a year, an 8 kW array close to 7,900. That is a yearly total and it arrives unevenly. The bulk of it lands in the long days on either side of midsummer, while a panel under heavy winter cloud produces a small fraction of its rating, so any plan that depends on steady month by month output is misreading the resource.
Orientation, pitch and shade decide the rest. South facing planes collect the most across a year, east and west planes trade some annual total for output spread through the morning and afternoon, and a north face rarely repays its racking. Because Burnaby is built around dense town centres, shading from neighbouring buildings is a more realistic concern here than in a subdivision of detached houses, and it is worth having measured rather than judged from the driveway. A single shaded module can pull down a whole string unless the system uses microinverters or per panel optimisers, so the fix is a design decision made before installation, not after.
What the BC Hydro export credit actually offsets
Burnaby homes connect to BC Hydro. On 1 July 2026 BC Hydro closed Rate Schedule 1289, its net metering rate, to new customers, and new systems now connect under Rate Schedule 2289, the self generation rate. The most useful way to understand the difference is to ask what your exported energy buys, and what it does not.
Start with what is unchanged. Your panels power the house before anything reaches the meter, and your generation is still netted against your consumption inside each billing period. Production that happens while the dryer, the heat pump or the EV charger is running never becomes an export at all, and is therefore worth the full retail price you would otherwise have paid. That is still the most valuable kilowatt hour a Burnaby system makes.
What changed is the treatment of what is left over. Instead of banking surplus kilowatt hours to draw down later at retail value, BC Hydro converts a surplus at the end of a billing period into a bill credit at a fixed 10 cents per kWh, for systems up to 100 kW. Two limits are worth naming. The credit is applied against energy charges only, so it reduces the part of the bill that scales with consumption rather than the fixed charges that stay on the account whatever your panels do. And 10 cents sits below the residential energy rate, so exporting is a worse deal than self consuming. Solar reduces the variable part of a Burnaby bill. It does not remove the account.
Two more points of fact. BC Hydro time of day pricing is opt in, so unless you choose to switch you remain on the standard tiered residential rate and are never moved onto peak pricing automatically. And a homeowner who already had net metering keeps Rate Schedule 1289 until ten years have passed from their own service start date, not ten years from the rate change.
Roofs in a city built around town centres
Burnaby has 101,135 dwellings and the mix reflects its town centre density. High rise apartments are the single largest category at 29.4%, low rise apartments add 23.6%, and together apartments make up 53% of all homes in the city. Single detached houses are 18.9%, duplexes 16.5% and row houses 8.7%. Growth around Metrotown, Brentwood, Lougheed and Edmonds is why the apartment share is what it is.
If you live in one of those apartment buildings, solar is not off the table but it is a different project. The roof is common property, so an array is approved by the strata, funded from the reserve fund or a special levy, and sized against the consumption of the building, typically its common area load: elevators, corridor lighting, parkade ventilation, pumps. That is a genuinely good fit for a monthly settled export credit, because common area load runs all day, every day, which means most of the production is consumed on site rather than exported. If you want to pursue it, the first move is the strata council and the alteration process, not an installer.
For the 18.9% in detached houses, and the duplex and row house owners with a clearly defined roof, the ordinary sequence applies. Confirm the roof covering has enough life left that you are not paying twice for the same array, check midday shading on the planes you would use, including shade cast by taller neighbouring buildings, and have the electrical service assessed, since the main panel has to accept a back fed breaker sized for the inverter. On a duplex, expect the neighbour and any strata to be part of the decision, because roof work usually touches common property even where the building is split in two.
Heritage rules that apply to a short list of homes
Burnaby has designated more than 50 heritage resources across the city, through a mix of heritage designation bylaws, heritage revitalization agreements and covenants. If your property is on that list, exterior work including a rooftop array runs through the heritage process attached to it, and that is a question to settle before you commission a design.
Outside that specific list, and it is a short one relative to the size of the city, homeowners face no heritage based restriction on rooftop solar at all. For most Burnaby addresses the heritage question resolves in a single phone call and then stops being relevant, which is worth doing early rather than assuming either way.
Storage, rebates and how they fit together
Storage deserves a closer look in Burnaby than it did under the old rate, and the reason is arithmetic rather than enthusiasm. Since an exported kilowatt hour now earns 10 cents while an imported one costs the residential energy rate, a battery that holds midday production for evening use captures the difference instead of giving it away. That does not make storage free, and a battery is a significant addition to a project budget, but it is a better proposition under Rate Schedule 2289 than it was under net metering, where the grid already acted as an unlimited bank.
The BC Hydro rebate covers both halves. Residential solar earns $1,000 per kW of installed generator capacity up to $5,000, capped at 50% of the total installed cost. Battery storage paired with solar earns $500 per kWh up to $1,500, with a 5 kWh minimum and the same 50% cost cap, and up to $5,000 where the battery is enrolled in Peak Saver. Since 1 June 2026 the work has to be done by a member of the Home Performance Contractor Network, so check that a shortlisted installer qualifies before you take the quote seriously. Note also that claiming the rebate places you on the Self Generation Service rate, which only costs something if you already hold the older net metering rate.
Federal support is thinner than it was. The Canada Greener Homes Loan, interest free up to $40,000, stopped accepting new applications on 2 October 2025 and only previously approved loans are still funded. The Canada Greener Homes Affordability Program that took over runs no cost retrofits through provincial partners aimed at low to median income households, and while solar qualifies federally, the eligible technology list is drawn up province by province. Canada has no federal investment tax credit for residential solar. British Columbia has at times exempted qualifying solar equipment from provincial sales tax, and that scope changes with provincial budgets, so confirm the current PST treatment of your equipment when you buy.