What an exported kilowatt hour is worth in Sussex
NB Power's net metering credit is defined by a relationship rather than by a number. Electricity you export is credited at the same volumetric rate you would otherwise pay for it, one unit against one unit, instead of at a reduced buyback price. There is no separate export rate to look up, because the export rate is simply your rate.
That has a consequence worth sitting with. Since the credit is defined against the retail price, it moves with the retail price. If the cost of electricity rises, the worth of every kilowatt hour your roof sends to the grid rises alongside it, automatically and with no programme change required. An array under this structure behaves partly as a hedge against future rate increases, which is a different proposition from a fixed buyback price that stays flat while the cost of power climbs.
Two limits sit on that. Credits carry forward month by month, but the balance is cleared every March 31 and nothing is paid out for the remainder, so the hedge only works up to a year of your own consumption. And the credit is flat: no tiered bands, no day and night split, nothing to be gained by moving loads around the clock.
The link is also not permanent. NB Power has asked its regulator to replace the current structure with net billing, setting separate buy and sell rates plus a demand charge, and separate rates would break the tie between what an export earns and what an import costs. As of August 2026 that proposal was still under review and had not taken effect, and it provides for existing participants to be grandfathered on the current rules for up to 10 years if it is approved. Nobody can tell you the timing, so treat a salesperson's deadline as a guess rather than a fact.
Who takes your application, and who has no say in it
In a town the size of Sussex it is natural to assume the municipality has some role in connecting a solar system to the grid. It does not. Distribution here belongs to NB Power, and that is settled by legislation rather than by local arrangement: New Brunswick's Electricity Act names only three municipal distribution utilities in the province, Saint John Energy, the city of Edmundston and the Perth-Andover Electric Light Commission. Sussex is not among them, so NB Power is your distributor by elimination.
The interconnection therefore runs entirely through NB Power. You apply to its net metering programme, which targets 10 business days to review an application. Systems are capped at 100 kW of nameplate capacity, far above anything a house needs. The province requires an electrical wiring permit and an inspection by the Department of Public Safety. NB Power then fits an AMI meter and connects the system, and nothing may be energized before its written approval is in hand.
Keeping the two tracks separate in your head is the practical benefit of knowing this. A question about the credit, the meter or the connection date goes to NB Power. A question about whether the work needs a municipal permit goes to the town. Neither can answer for the other, and an installer who blurs the two will leave you waiting at the wrong counter.
The municipal side is the part you have to confirm
The provincial and utility requirements above are fixed and do not vary by municipality. The municipal requirement is the part that does vary across New Brunswick, and it is the part to establish for yourself rather than assume. Some towns in this province name solar in their permit rules and publish a processing expectation. Others do not mention it at all and leave the classification to a phone call.
So call the town office before you book an installation date, and ask four things: whether a roof-mounted array requires a building permit, how the application will be classified if it does, what the fee is, and how long a review normally takes. If you have land and are weighing a ground mount instead, add a fifth question about whether your zone permits one. Sussex is small enough that this is usually a single conversation rather than a series of them.
Write down who you spoke to and what they told you. The reason is not bureaucratic caution. It is that an installer working across several municipalities will often quote the rules of whichever town they worked in last, and a written note of what Sussex itself requires is what settles that disagreement before it costs you a scheduled crew and a delivery slot.
Your roof, and who controls it in Sussex
55.4% of dwellings in Sussex are single-detached houses, which is the straightforward case: one owner, one roof, one decision. A quarter of the stock, 25.7%, sits in low-rise apartment buildings, where the roof belongs to the building and the call belongs to a landlord or a condo board rather than to whoever lives under it. High-rise is negligible here at 0.2%.
Another 8.5% are semi-detached and 6.3% are row housing, so roughly one home in seven shares a roofline with a neighbour. The electrical side is unaffected by that: the array feeds your own panel and meter and has nothing to do with the neighbour's supply. Structure is the shared part. Roof planes can cross a property line, mounting hardware may land on common rafters, and a re-roof years from now becomes something two households decide together. Get the boundary and the mounting locations confirmed before the design is fixed rather than after.
For a detached house the constraints are physical. A yield of about 1,145 kWh per installed kilowatt puts a 6 kW array near 6,900 kWh in a year and a 10 kW array near 11,400, but that assumes planes with a decent southerly aspect and no serious shading through the middle of the day. Shade costs more production than most people expect, and it is why a serious quote comes from a survey of your actual roof rather than from its dimensions on a map.
Size to your bills rather than to the roof. Under the credit rules described above, production beyond a year of your own use earns nothing once the annual balance has been cleared, so twelve months of statements, electric heat included if you have it, is what should decide the system size, not the number of panels that will fit.
What help with the cost still exists
The provincial rebate is closed. NB Power's Total Home Energy Savings Program paid $200 per kW toward a residential array, to a maximum of $3,000 at 15 kW, and its solar stream stopped taking enrolments on 27 May 2026. Nobody starting a project now can use it, so a quote that still shows it as a deduction is quoting a number that no longer exists.
The federal Clean Technology ITC is not part of the answer. The Income Tax Act limits it to taxable Canadian corporations and certain trusts, so it is a business credit rather than one a household can claim. Eligibility rules decide whether a particular taxpayer and a particular project qualify, so confirm it with an accountant rather than letting an installer build it into a payback figure on your behalf.