What a North Vancouver roof produces in a year
Natural Resources Canada models North Vancouver at roughly 936 kWh a year for each kW of installed capacity on a well oriented, unshaded array. That gives you a first pass without a site visit: around 4,700 kWh from a 5 kW system, around 5,600 kWh from 6 kW, around 9,400 kWh from 10 kW. Read it as an annual number, and remember the year is lopsided. Most of that total arrives in the long days on either side of midsummer, and a panel under heavy winter cloud returns a fraction of its nameplate rating, so an array sized to cover a December bill would be absurdly oversized for July.
Everything after that number is a property question. Panels facing south collect the most across a full year. East and west planes trade away some annual total in exchange for spreading output across the morning and afternoon, which is not a bad trade under the export rules described below. A north facing plane rarely earns back what it costs to install. What a designer is really counting is usable area rather than roof area: vents, plumbing stacks, skylights and the setbacks required at roof edges all come out before the first module is placed. Shading has to be measured on site instead of eyeballed from a satellite image, because one shaded module can drag down an entire string unless the design isolates panels with microinverters or DC optimisers.
At most addresses here, the roof is not yours alone
The housing stock is the most consequential fact on this page. Of 27,295 dwellings, 38.1% are low rise apartments and 28.5% are high rise, which puts 66.6% of the city in buildings where the roof is common property. Single detached houses, the case almost all solar marketing is written for, are 10.7% of the stock. Duplexes add 11.4% and row houses another 7.9%.
If you live in an apartment, the honest answer is that you cannot put panels on your own suite, and the useful move is a different one: take it to the strata council as a building project. A building scale array is sized against common consumption, the corridor and parkade lighting, ventilation, pumps and elevators that run on the building meter, rather than against any single suite. It is funded from the contingency reserve or a special levy, needs a vote under the strata's alteration rules, and usually starts with an energy study rather than a panel quote. That is a slower road than a house install, but for two thirds of North Vancouver it is the only road there is.
In the 10.7% of dwellings that are single detached, the decision is yours alone and the checks are practical rather than procedural. Look hard at how many years of life the roof covering has left, because pulling an array off and refitting it to replace shingles underneath is pure waste. Have the electrical service assessed, since the main panel has to accept a back fed breaker sized for your inverter and an older service may need upgrading first. Duplex and row house owners sit in between: the home feels detached, but the roof plane above you is frequently common property under the strata plan, so read the plan and the bylaws before you commission a design rather than after.
What BC Hydro changed, and what it left alone
North Vancouver homes connect to BC Hydro, and BC Hydro closed its net metering rate, Rate Schedule 1289, to new customers on 1 July 2026. New systems now connect under Rate Schedule 2289, the self generation rate. The change gets described loosely, and the loose descriptions go wrong in both directions, so it is worth separating what actually ended from what did not.
Most of it did not end. Your panels still power the house first, and the electricity you generate and use on the spot never reaches the meter or the rate schedule at all. Your generation is still netted against your consumption inside each billing period, so a sunny afternoon still offsets that evening's use before anything counts as an export. You still connect through an application to BC Hydro and a bidirectional meter. And you remain on the standard tiered residential rate: BC Hydro's time of day pricing is opt in, so installing solar does not move you onto peak and off peak prices unless you ask to be moved.
What ended is the banking. Under the old rate a surplus kilowatt hour stayed a kilowatt hour and could be spent months later at retail value, which let a summer surplus pay down a winter deficit. Under Rate Schedule 2289 any surplus left when a billing period closes is converted into money at a fixed 10 cents per kWh and credited against the energy charges on your bill, for systems up to 100 kW. Ten cents sits below the residential energy rate, so the same kilowatt hour is worth more used inside your home than sold to the grid, and sizing an array to your own daytime consumption now beats sizing it to your annual total.
The 100 kW ceiling matters more here than in a city of houses
In a city of detached houses the 100 kW ceiling on Rate Schedule 2289 is trivia, because no house comes anywhere near it. In North Vancouver it is worth knowing, because the arrays that make sense on a stock that is 38.1% low rise and 28.5% high rise are building scale, and building scale is where a capacity limit starts to bite. If your strata is looking at a large flat roof, the ceiling is a design input rather than a footnote, and it is a question to put to BC Hydro before a layout is drawn rather than after.
The export credit pushes a building project in a particular direction too. Because a surplus settles at 10 cents against energy charges while self consumption avoids the retail rate you would otherwise pay, an array matched to what the building actually draws in daylight beats one sized to fill the available roof. Common area load has a helpful shape for this: lighting in corridors and parkades, ventilation, pumps and elevator motors run through the day, which is exactly when panels produce. A strata that starts from twelve months of its own building meter data will land on a smaller, better justified system than one that starts from a roof plan.
Rebates, financing and the contractor condition
The BC Hydro solar and battery rebate pays $1,000 for each kW of installed generator capacity up to $5,000, and never more than 50% of what the installation actually cost. Two ceilings, and which one binds depends on your quote: on a small array the per kW arithmetic runs out first, on an unusually cheap installation the cost cap does. Battery storage added alongside solar earns $500 per kWh to a limit of $1,500, with a 5 kWh minimum and the same cost test, and that limit rises to $5,000 where the battery is enrolled in Peak Saver.
One condition catches people out. Since 1 June 2026 the work has to be carried out by a member of the Home Performance Contractor Network for the rebate to apply, so membership is a question to ask while you are shortlisting installers, not after you have signed. Claiming the rebate also places you on the Self Generation Service rate. For anyone connecting a new system in North Vancouver that condition costs nothing, since a new customer lands on Rate Schedule 2289 either way. It only bites for a homeowner who already holds the older net metering rate and would be surrendering grandfathered years to take the money.
Federal support has thinned. The Canada Greener Homes Loan, interest free up to $40,000, stopped taking new applications on 2 October 2025 and now funds only loans already approved. Its replacement, the Canada Greener Homes Affordability Program, runs through provincial partners and targets low to median income households with no cost retrofits; solar is federally eligible, though each province publishes its own technology list. Canada has no equivalent of the US federal investment tax credit for residential solar, so a quote showing one is borrowing American figures. British Columbia has at times exempted qualifying solar equipment from provincial sales tax, and the scope moves with each provincial budget, so confirm the current PST treatment of your specific equipment at the time of purchase.