Sun hours, yield and what a typical system makes
Surrey sees about 3.2 peak sun hours a day averaged across the year, which works out to roughly 997 kWh annually for every kW of panel capacity on a well oriented roof. A typical residential system in the city is around 7 kW, so something close to 7,000 kWh a year is the planning number. Check that against your own consumption before anything else: BC Hydro shows a year of your usage history, and that history, not the roof area available, is the honest starting point for sizing.
The annual figure hides a steep seasonal curve. Most of the production lands in the long days on either side of midsummer, and a panel under heavy winter overcast delivers a small fraction of its rating. Orientation shifts the shape as well as the size: a south facing plane collects the most over a year, east and west planes give up some annual total but spread output across the morning and afternoon, and a north face is rarely worth panelling. Shading is the one thing worth measuring rather than eyeballing, since a single shaded module can drag down an entire string unless the design uses microinverters or per panel optimisers.
How the BC Hydro rate change affects sizing in Surrey
Surrey homes connect to BC Hydro, and on 1 July 2026 BC Hydro closed net metering, Rate Schedule 1289, to new customers. New systems connect under Rate Schedule 2289, the self generation rate. If you are reading older Surrey solar pages that promise net metering, they are describing a rate that is no longer open.
The change is narrower than it sounds, and the part that matters is the settlement cadence. Your panels still supply the house first, and your production is still netted against your consumption inside each billing period. What is gone is the annual arithmetic. Surplus kilowatt hours used to bank and offset later bills at retail value, so an array sized to a full year of consumption could carry a household from summer through into winter. Now a surplus is settled at the end of each billing period as money: a bill credit at a fixed 10 cents per kWh, applied against energy charges, for systems up to 100 kW.
That flips the sizing logic. Because 10 cents sits below the residential energy rate, a kilowatt hour consumed on site is worth more than one exported, so the design target is not your annual consumption, it is how much of your production you can actually use as it is generated. For a Surrey household that is out during the working day, that argues either for a somewhat smaller array than the old rules would have justified, or for moving load into daylight: charging an EV in the afternoon, running a heat pump water tank on a midday schedule, timing a dishwasher or laundry for noon. It is also worth being clear that BC Hydro time of day pricing is opt in. The default residential rate remains the tiered one, and nobody is put onto peak pricing automatically. Homeowners who already had net metering keep Rate Schedule 1289 until ten years from their own service start date, not ten years from the rate change.
Your roof, and why Surrey housing suits solar
Surrey has 185,675 dwellings and the mix is favourable. Single detached houses are 32.8%, duplexes 22.9% and row houses 16.7%, which puts 74.4% of the city's homes in ground oriented forms. Low rise apartments are 20.2% and high rises just 4.8%. The practical meaning is about ownership rather than architecture: in most of Surrey the roof decision belongs to the homeowner, which removes the approval step that stalls most apartment projects before a quote is even written.
Duplexes at 22.9% are the exception worth flagging. A duplex roof is often one shared structure, and roof alterations usually touch common property even where each side is separately owned, so the neighbour and, where there is one, the strata belong in the conversation early. Row houses at 16.7% can be the same: the home feels like a house, but under the strata plan the roof may be common property. Read the strata plan before you assume otherwise.
For a detached Surrey house the sequence is straightforward. Check the roof covering has enough life left that you will not pay to remove and reinstall the array partway through its life. Check midday shading across the planes you would use. Then have the electrical service assessed, because the main panel has to accept a back fed breaker sized for the inverter, and a service upgrade discovered late is the most common reason a quoted price moves.
Permits, sealed drawings and how long approval takes
Surrey asks for more paperwork than a homeowner usually expects, and it is better to budget for that at the start. A building permit is required for all rooftop solar, photovoltaic or solar hot water, and the application must include structural and electrical drawings sealed by a registered professional. An electrical permit is required on top of that, always. Treat the engineering as a real line item in the quote, because a sealed structural review is not something an installer can waive on your behalf.
The city publishes live permit processing times, which makes the wait easier to plan around. Residential building permits currently average 4.7 weeks against a 10 week target, and additions or renovations average 1.6 weeks against a 6 week target. Around 20 days is a reasonable working assumption for a straightforward residential solar permit, but the published averages are the number to check on the day you apply, since they move with workload.
Heritage is unlikely to be your obstacle here. There are presently no heritage conservation areas in Surrey, and heritage protection applies only to individual properties under a Heritage Revitalization Agreement, a conservation covenant or a Heritage Designation Bylaw. Unless your property is on that specific list, no heritage review touches your roof at all.
What it costs, and what the rebates change
Installed cost in Surrey averages around CA$3.00 per watt, so a typical 7 kW system runs roughly CA$19,000 to CA$23,000 before any rebate. That range is a useful sanity check on quotes: a bid far below it usually means smaller or different equipment, and a bid well above it should come with a stated reason, such as a complex roof, an electrical service upgrade, a long conduit run or the sealed engineering Surrey requires.
The BC Hydro solar and battery rebate offers up to CA$5,000 for residential solar, at $1,000 per kW of installed generator capacity, capped at 50% of the total installed cost. Battery storage paired with solar earns up to $1,500, at $500 per kWh with a 5 kWh minimum, rising to up to $5,000 where the battery is enrolled in Peak Saver. Since 1 June 2026 the installer must be a member of the Home Performance Contractor Network for the rebate to apply, so confirm membership while shortlisting rather than after signing.
Be realistic about payback. BC Hydro rates are low compared with high rate provinces, which makes paybacks here longer: 12 to 16 years is the usual range for a Surrey system, with about 14 years a fair midpoint, and the move to a 10 cent export credit does not shorten it. Most people who go ahead in Surrey are buying something other than a quick return: insulation against future rate increases, a supply for EV charging, or the option to add storage later.
Federal help has thinned. The Canada Greener Homes Loan, interest free up to $40,000, stopped taking new applications on 2 October 2025 and only approved loans are still funded; its replacement works through provincial partners and targets low to median income households. Canada has no federal investment tax credit for residential solar, so any quote that assumes one is using American figures. British Columbia has at times exempted qualifying solar equipment from provincial sales tax, and the scope changes with budgets, so confirm PST treatment at the time of purchase.