What a Delta roof produces in a year
Natural Resources Canada puts Delta at about 1,031 kWh a year for every kW of installed panel capacity, assuming a well oriented array with clear sky access. Scaled up, that is roughly 6,200 kWh from a 6 kW system, 8,200 kWh from 8 kW and 10,300 kWh from 10 kW. Treat those as modelled numbers rather than measurements: they describe an idealised roof, and your own roof will land above or below depending on pitch, direction, shading and how clean the panels stay.
The annual figure also hides a strong seasonal shape. Production peaks across the long days around midsummer and falls hard under thick winter overcast, which matters more than it used to because of how exports are now settled. A system that would carry a December bill on its own would be so large that most of its summer output ends up leaving the house. The better instinct in Delta is to design around what a realistic roof plane can hold and what the household actually draws, then check the seasonal profile against your own consumption rather than against an annual average.
Orientation is the lever you control least and it matters most. A south facing plane collects the highest annual total; splitting an array across east and west planes lowers that total but widens the hours of the day when something is being produced. Roof clutter is the lever people forget: vents, chimneys, skylights and the clear space required at roof edges all subtract from the area a designer can actually use, so the panel count that fits is usually smaller than the roof looks.
Your exports come back as money, not as electricity
Delta homes connect to BC Hydro, which closed Rate Schedule 1289, its net metering rate, to new customers on 1 July 2026. Anything connected after that goes on Rate Schedule 2289, the self generation rate. The clearest way to see the difference is to ask what you actually receive for a surplus, and where on the bill it lands.
Under the old rate you received electricity. Surplus kilowatt hours were banked as kilowatt hours and stayed available to cancel out later consumption at whatever retail rate applied then, so the bank behaved like a store of energy. Under Rate Schedule 2289 you receive money. A surplus remaining when a billing period closes is converted at a fixed 10 cents per kWh into a bill credit, and that credit is applied against energy charges, for systems up to 100 kW. It offsets the part of your bill that scales with the kilowatt hours you draw, and nothing carries forward in energy terms for a later month to consume.
Two things did not change, and both are worth stating plainly because they are easy to lose in the noise. Your panels still serve the house before anything reaches the grid, so self consumption is untouched by any of this. And your generation is still netted against your use inside each billing period, so the array only counts as exporting once it has covered what the house is drawing at that moment. Nor does any of this move you onto time of day pricing: that rate is opt in at BC Hydro, and the tiered residential rate remains the default.
The practical consequence is a sizing rule. Because 10 cents sits below the residential energy rate, a kilowatt hour consumed in the house is worth more than the same kilowatt hour exported. Sizing to annual consumption, which was the sensible default under banking, now overshoots. Sizing to daytime consumption, and shifting what load you can into daylight, is the version that fits the current rate.
Delta roofs, and the duplex question
Delta has 38,060 dwellings and a majority of them, 55.5%, are single detached houses. That is the clean case for solar: one owner, one roof, one electrical service, and no approval needed from anybody who shares the building. Apartments are a small part of the picture by comparison, 14.6% low rise and just 1.7% high rise, so the strata heavy dynamic that dominates denser cities is not the typical Delta situation.
The number that stands out is duplexes at 19.2%, an unusually large secondary category. A duplex complicates a solar project in a way a detached house does not, because the roof is normally one structure divided between two households. Whether you can proceed on your own depends on how the property is held: a strata titled duplex will usually treat the roof as common property, which means an alteration approval before any work, while other arrangements leave the decision with the individual owners. Either way the array occupies a plane your neighbour also lives under, so the flashing, the penetration details and the future reroofing sequence are worth agreeing before the panels arrive rather than after.
Delta covers Ladner, Tsawwassen and North Delta, and all three sit under the same municipal rules, so the approval answers on this page do not change by neighbourhood. What changes from one address to the next is the roof: its direction, its pitch, how much of it is broken up by vents and dormers, and how many years the covering has left. Replacing shingles under a mounted array costs a removal and a refit, so a roof within a few years of replacement is usually worth doing first.
The heritage step, and who it applies to
Delta requires a Heritage Alteration Permit before changes are made to a protected heritage property, and the definition of protected is specific rather than vague. It covers a property subject to a heritage covenant, a heritage revitalization agreement, a municipal designation bylaw, a heritage conservation area bylaw, or a temporary protection order. If none of those attaches to your title, the heritage step is not part of your project.
If one of them does, plan for it early. Where a property is designated, Council approval is required, which means the timeline includes a meeting date you do not control. A Heritage Alteration Permit is also required before changes within a Heritage Conservation Area, so in that case the trigger is where the property sits rather than anything about the building itself. A roof mounted array on a visible plane is precisely the kind of exterior alteration these permits exist to review, so the sequence to follow is to establish which category your address falls into, then commission a design that already assumes the review, rather than paying for a layout that has to be redrawn.
Outside heritage, confirm the rest of the approvals directly with Delta before you sign anything: ask which municipal permit a rooftop array needs, what drawings the application has to include, and who issues the electrical permit for the connection. A quote that assumes a permit path is worth less than one built around the answers the city gives you for your own address.
Rebates, and why storage is worth a second look
The BC Hydro solar and battery rebate is worth up to $5,000 on residential solar, calculated as $1,000 for each kW of installed generator capacity and capped at 50% of the total installed cost. The per kW figure is what people quote, but the percentage cap is what quietly decides the outcome on a cheaper installation, so work out both numbers against your actual quote instead of assuming the headline.
The storage side deserves attention in Delta specifically because of how exports are now treated. When a surplus leaves the house it is worth a fixed 10 cents per kWh, while the same kilowatt hour held back and used in the evening avoids the retail energy rate you would otherwise pay. That gap is the entire economic case for a battery, and it is why BC Hydro is rated as a high value environment for storage. The rebate follows: $500 per kWh up to $1,500, with a 5 kWh minimum and the same 50% ceiling, and up to $5,000 where the battery is enrolled in Peak Saver. Read the Peak Saver terms before assuming that larger number, because it is the enrollment, not the hardware, that unlocks it.
Two conditions apply to the whole rebate. Since 1 June 2026 the installer has to be a member of the Home Performance Contractor Network, which is a question for the shortlisting stage rather than the contract stage. And taking the rebate places you on the Self Generation Service rate, a condition that is irrelevant to a new Delta system, since Rate Schedule 2289 is where a new customer starts anyway, and only matters to someone already holding the older net metering rate.
On financing, the Canada Greener Homes Loan, interest free up to $40,000, closed to new applications on 2 October 2025 and now only funds loans already approved. The Canada Greener Homes Affordability Program replaced it, delivered through provincial partners and aimed at low to median income households; solar is federally eligible although each province maintains its own technology list. There is no Canadian equivalent of the US federal investment tax credit, so treat any quote showing one with suspicion. British Columbia has at times exempted qualifying solar equipment from provincial sales tax, and since the scope shifts with provincial budgets, confirm the PST position on your equipment at purchase.