Dieppe has an unusual number of shared rooflines
Just under half of Dieppe's dwellings, 48.2%, are single-detached houses. The distinctive part is what sits next to them: 14.6% semi-detached, the highest share among the 12 New Brunswick cities in this research batch, plus 7.4% row housing on a continuous roofline and 20.5% in low-rise apartment units where a landlord controls the roof.
A shared roofline does not complicate the electrical work. The array connects to your meter, your service panel and your account, and your neighbour's supply is untouched by it. What it complicates is the structure and the future. The roof plane may cross a property line, the racking lands on rafters that can be common to both units, and a re-roof years from now becomes a conversation with whoever lives on the other side of the wall.
Handle that at the start. Establish where your roof ends, get your neighbour's position recorded if any part of the work touches shared structure, and have the installer show you exactly where mounts and penetrations will land. Row housing needs the same treatment across more than one neighbour, which is a longer conversation and a reason to start it early.
If you are in one of the low-rise apartment units, an individual install is not the route. The roof is a building asset, so what works there is a proposal to the owner for a building-scale system rather than a quote for your unit.
From application to switch on, step by step
NB Power runs the interconnection and the sequence is fixed. You apply online. NB Power targets 10 business days for its own review of the application. After that, the work itself typically takes 30 to 90 business days: the installer completes the installation, the New Brunswick Department of Public Safety inspects it, NB Power swaps your meter for an AMI unit, and the system is connected to the grid.
Two conditions run through all of it. The equipment has to be certified, and an electrical wiring permit is required. You cannot legally energize the array before NB Power's written approval, and that approval includes the compatible meter being in place, so the meter swap is not a formality to be tidied up afterwards.
The useful thing about seeing the sequence written out is knowing where the time actually goes. The paperwork review is the short part. The installation, inspection and meter stage is the part that stretches, and it is scheduled around installer availability and inspection dates rather than around your closing date or the start of a heating season.
What an exported kilowatt hour is worth in Dieppe
NB Power credits exports at the same volumetric rate you pay to buy power, one for one, and the credits are not split into tiered or time-of-use bands. There is no cheap hour and no expensive hour to design around, which means the usual advice about running the dishwasher at midday does not apply here. Generate when the sun allows and the credit is worth the same.
Credits roll from month to month and then zero out every March 31, with no payout for whatever is left. Systems are capped at 100 kW, far above anything residential, so the real limit is that annual reset. Size the array against a full year of your own electricity use, and treat surplus generation as something you give away rather than something you bank.
The Dieppe permit counter, and the pages to look for
Dieppe charges $7.50 per $1,000 of estimated construction cost for a building permit, with a $25 minimum. The fee is public and predictable. What is not published is a turnaround time, and the city's construction page does not list solar panels as a project category, so there is nothing that tells you how a solar application will be handled. Confirm requirements with the city before you set an install date.
One practical note when you or your installer go looking. Dieppe's construction information sits under amenagement-et-construction on the city site and its heritage material under histoire-et-patrimoine, with English versions of the same pages available. Searching in English can miss the page you want, so it is worth navigating the city's own menus rather than relying on a search engine to land you in the right place.
Heritage is a live question in Dieppe without being a clearly mapped one. The city's own history and heritage page confirms that some areas have been designated as heritage sites, but it does not name them or spell out what approvals apply to exterior work. Do not assume your address is affected and do not assume it is not: ask Planning about the specific property before the design is locked in.
What is left of the financial help
NB Power's Total Home Energy Savings Program used to pay $200/kW toward residential solar, capped at $3,000 on a 15 kW system. Solar enrolment closed on May 27, 2026, so it is not part of a new Dieppe project and should not be showing up as a deduction in a current quote. If it does, the quote was built from an old template.
The federal Clean Technology ITC does not fill the gap. It is limited by the Income Tax Act to taxable Canadian corporations and certain trusts, so an individual homeowner cannot claim it. Whether a particular household project qualifies depends on eligibility rules worth confirming with an accountant before they go into anyone's payback calculation, rather than after.