Yearly solar output across Kawartha Lakes
Natural Resources Canada's municipal photovoltaic potential dataset gives Kawartha Lakes about 1,172 kWh a year for each kW of installed panel capacity. That assumes a well oriented, unshaded array, so it is the upper bound for any given address rather than a prediction. Orientation moves it most: a south facing plane outperforms east or west, and north facing roof area is generally not worth the equipment. Shade moves it next, and on rural and semi rural lots that usually means trees rather than buildings, which is worth an honest look at the south side of the property before a design is drawn.
The practical use of the figure is sizing. Take the annual kWh number from your Hydro One bill, divide by the yield figure, and you have roughly the array size that would match a year of your own consumption. That is the right target under Ontario net metering, where exported power is credited against future bills but never paid out in cash for an annual surplus. Anything built beyond your own use generates credits you will not spend.
Seasonality is why the annual view is the only useful one. Summer output runs far ahead of a typical household's use, winter runs behind, and snow cover removes production entirely for stretches. Hydro One carries credits for up to 12 months, so the summer surplus is what pays for the winter shortfall. That rolling year is the unit of account for your system, not any single month.
Roofs in a rural, amalgamated municipality
At 83.8% single detached, Kawartha Lakes is about as straightforward as Ontario housing gets for solar. In the large majority of cases the person reading this owns the roof, owns the electrical service and needs nobody else's permission to proceed. Apartment stock is minor by comparison, about 6.8% low rise and 2.2% high rise, so the condo board and landlord questions that dominate a city page apply to only a small slice of households here. Semi detached at about 1.7%, row housing at about 2% and duplexes at about 2.6% round out the shared wall housing, and even those are usually individual decisions.
What replaces the ownership question is a design question. Rural and small community housing tends to have more roof geometry to work with: additions, dormers, attached garages and outbuildings, which means an installer often has a choice of several planes rather than one obvious face. That flexibility is genuinely useful for avoiding shade, but as the next section explains, spreading an array across multiple roof faces has a direct cost in this municipality.
Two checks are worth doing early. First, the condition and age of the roof covering, since panels outlast shingles and it is much cheaper to re-roof before an array goes on than to remove and reinstall it later. Second, the capacity of your existing electrical service, because older rural properties sometimes need service work that belongs in the budget from the start rather than as a surprise partway through.
The permit fee is charged per roof face
Kawartha Lakes charges a flat $785 building permit fee per roof face for roof mounted solar installations. That is an unusual structure and it has a direct design consequence: an array split across two roof planes is charged for two, and an array spread across three is charged for three. Before you accept a proposed layout, ask your installer whether the same capacity could sit on a single plane, and what it would cost in annual output if it did. Sometimes concentrating the array is clearly better, sometimes the shading or orientation penalty outweighs the fee. The point is that in this municipality it is a real trade off with a number attached, and it should be made deliberately rather than by default.
That solar fee is separate from the municipality's other building permit charges. New residential construction is charged at $23.25 per square metre, which is a different fee for a different kind of work and does not apply to a rooftop array. There is also a $271 minimum permit fee that applies to all permits. Knowing which line applies to your project is what stops a quote from drifting: a solar permit is priced per roof face, not by floor area.
Confirm the current fee schedule with the municipality when you apply, since fee by-laws are updated periodically, and make sure your installer's quote states clearly who is pulling the permit and whether its cost is included. A quote that omits the permit line is not comparable to one that includes it.
How Hydro One values what you export
Kawartha Lakes homeowners deal with Hydro One Networks Inc. for both distribution and net metering, so a single organisation handles the wires, the meter and the credits. Hydro One credits exported solar power for up to 12 months. That rolling window is the thing to design against: credit banked in July has to be used within the year that follows, which is normally fine for a system sized to your own consumption and is exactly why an oversized system wastes money.
What those credits are worth is not fixed, because Hydro One residential customers choose their price plan. Tiered, Time of Use and Ultra Low Overnight pricing all exist, and the plan you are on determines the rate at which your exports are credited and your imports are billed. The plans reward different households: one that is empty all day and busy in the evening behaves differently from one with someone home at midday, and a household charging an electric vehicle overnight is different again. It is worth reviewing your plan choice at the same time you plan the array, rather than treating them as separate decisions, because the same panels produce a different bill outcome on different plans.
On process, applications go to Hydro One's Distributed Connections Group before you incur project costs. Systems of 12 kW or smaller are submitted on Form C and larger systems on Form B. The phrase before incurring project costs is the operative one: the application is meant to come first, ahead of ordering equipment or booking an installation crew. Ontario also raised its simplified micro embedded generation threshold from 10 kW to 12 kW as of May 1, 2026, which lines up with the Form C boundary, so most residential projects sit on the simpler side of the line.
Programmes that reduce what you pay
Ontario's Home Renovation Savings Program provides combined rebates of up to $10,000 for solar PV paired with battery storage. It launched in January 2025 and the expanded 2026-27 programme year runs from April 1, 2026 to March 31, 2027. There is an interaction with everything above that you should settle first: homeowners taking the solar incentive are generally directed toward a load displacement configuration rather than full net metering. Since your Hydro One application and your price plan choice are both built around one arrangement or the other, work out which one you are pursuing before you file anything.
The federal picture changed in late 2025 and older advice is unreliable. The Canada Greener Homes Loan, interest free up to $40,000, stopped accepting new applications on October 2, 2025, its funding is fully committed and only previously approved loans continue to be funded. The Canada Greener Homes Affordability Program took its place in September 2025, delivering no cost retrofits through participating provinces, which do not currently include Ontario, for low to median income households, with solar PV federally eligible but each province setting its own technology list. Canada has no federal investment tax credit for residential solar, so figures quoted from American sources do not apply here.
Some Ontario municipalities and local utilities periodically offer financing such as local improvement charges or on bill financing that can be applied to solar. What is on offer varies by service area and changes over time, so ask rather than assume.