Output from a Mission roof, and what erodes it
Natural Resources Canada's photovoltaic potential data puts Mission at 985 kWh per year for each kilowatt of panels at the optimal tilt and orientation. A 7 kW array therefore models at roughly 6,900 kWh a year and a 10 kW array at about 9,850 kWh, before deductions for the specifics of your roof.
Three things account for most of the gap between that figure and what a real roof does. Orientation comes first: a south-facing slope collects the most, east and west slopes give up a portion of it, and a north slope is generally not worth the mounting hardware. Pitch matters less than people assume, and a roof somewhere between a shallow and a moderate slope will be within a few points of ideal. Shading matters more than people assume, because partial shade on one panel drags on the whole string it sits in unless the design isolates panels with optimisers or microinverters.
The last factor is the year itself. Output is heavily weighted toward the long days, and the months either side of the winter solstice contribute a small fraction of the annual total. That is normal, it is priced into the annual figure, and it matters mainly because your consumption does not follow the same curve.
How to read a Mission quote under the current export rate
The rate you connect under determines how a quote should be built. BC Hydro closed net metering, Rate Schedule 1289, to new customers on 1 July 2026, and a Mission system installed now connects under Rate Schedule 2289. Your panels still serve the house before anything is exported, and generation is still netted against consumption inside each billing period. What changed is the treatment of a surplus: instead of banking kilowatt-hours at retail value, a surplus becomes a bill credit at a fixed 10 cents per kWh applied against energy charges, for systems up to 100 kW.
That splits every kilowatt-hour your roof makes into two kinds that are not worth the same amount. The ones the house consumes as they are produced displace power you would otherwise have bought at BC Hydro's residential energy rate. The ones that leave the property earn 10 cents per kWh, which is less. A proposal that multiplies total annual production by one retail rate is describing a system on a tariff that is no longer available to new customers in Mission.
So ask for three numbers instead of one: modelled annual production, the share of it the model expects you to use on site, and the share it expects to export. Then ask what daily load pattern produced that split. A house that is empty between eight and six exports far more of its midday output than one with somebody home, and the difference is worth real money under this rate. An installer who cannot show you the split has modelled a roof rather than a household.
This also changes which upgrades belong in the same conversation. Running the dishwasher, the laundry or an electric vehicle charger during daylight hours costs nothing to arrange and moves kilowatt-hours from the 10 cent side of the ledger to the more valuable side. None of it requires changing your rate.
Mission names solar panels in its own permit list
Most BC homeowners have to work out whether a rooftop array counts as an alteration under a general clause. In Mission you do not. The City's building permit page lists Installation of solar panels among the projects that require a Building Permit under Building Bylaw 3590-2003. The answer is published, it is unambiguous, and it means the permit belongs in your budget and your schedule from the first conversation.
The electrical and gas permits for the connection are not the City's to issue. Technical Safety BC handles that part, so the paperwork for a Mission installation is split between two bodies with their own timelines. Ask your installer to confirm they are pulling both, and ask when each is going in, because the sequencing is what usually delays a commissioning date.
Mission also publishes a live building permit wait times page rather than a single advertised turnaround. That is more honest than a fixed number and more useful, provided you actually look at it: check it before you agree to an install date, and check it again before equipment is ordered. A wait that has moved since your quote was written is a scheduling problem, not a surprise, if you catch it early.
Mission roofs, and the large duplex share
Mission is more ground-oriented than most of the Lower Mainland: 64.7% of its 14,095 dwellings are single-detached houses. That is the straightforward case. One owner, one roof, one building permit, and no third party whose approval you need before your installer starts.
The next largest group is unusual. 18.7% of dwellings are duplexes, which typically share a roof plane with the unit next door. Two things follow. The roof surface above your unit may be common property or limited common property rather than yours outright, which decides who can authorise fasteners going through it. And a duplex roof usually has one slope facing each way, so the useful half may sit above your neighbour rather than above you. Both are answerable questions, but they are answered from the strata plan and the title, not from a site visit.
The rest of the stock is 8% low-rise apartments, 5.6% row houses, 2% semi-detached and 0.6% high-rise. In those cases the roof is common property, the strata corporation is the decision maker, and any system installed on it belongs to the corporation rather than to a single owner.
Heritage designation in Mission covers institutions, not houses
The properties on Mission's heritage-designated list are named institutional and park sites: Fraser River Heritage Park, the Stave Falls Power House, the Mission Fairground, the Mission Post Office, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, the Mission Memorial Centre and the Mission Museum. Ordinary single-family homes are not on it.
That matters because heritage designation is the mechanism that can otherwise put an extra approval in front of exterior work, including panels visible from the street. In Mission it is not a step in a residential solar project, and no design review governs where panels can sit on a house.
There are also no US-style homeowner associations in Mission or anywhere in British Columbia. If a private body has authority over your roof it is a strata corporation under the Strata Property Act, which applies to the row, apartment and many duplex properties described above and to nobody else.
Which incentives a Mission homeowner can still use
The main one is BC Hydro's own rebate: up to $5,000 for residential solar, paid at $1,000 per kW of installed generator capacity and capped at 50% of total installed cost. Two limits, and whichever bites first is the one that applies to you. Pairing a battery adds up to $1,500 at $500 per kWh with a 5 kWh minimum and the same 50% cost cap, and that figure rises to up to $5,000 if the battery is enrolled in Peak Saver.
Since 1 June 2026 the rebate has required the work to be done by a member of the Home Performance Contractor Network. That turns a rebate question into a hiring question, so confirm membership before signing rather than discovering it at claim time. Note also that taking the rebate puts you on the Self-Generation Service rate, which for a new Mission installation is where you were headed anyway.
Federal support has narrowed. The Canada Greener Homes Loan (interest-free up to $40,000) closed to new applications on 2 October 2025, and only loans approved before then are still being funded. The Canada Greener Homes Affordability Program replaced it in September 2025, delivering no-cost retrofits through provincial partners to low- and median-income households, with solar federally eligible but each province setting its own technology list. There is no Canadian counterpart to the US investment tax credit. British Columbia has at times exempted qualifying solar equipment from provincial sales tax, but the scope shifts with provincial budgets, so have your supplier confirm the PST treatment of the specific equipment on your invoice.