Tiered or time-of-use, and why solar changes the answer
Tillsonburg Hydro bills residential customers under either time-of-use pricing, which splits the day into three rate periods, or tiered pricing, which charges a flat rate up to a monthly consumption threshold and a higher rate beyond it. The two structures value a solar array differently. Under time-of-use, when you generate matters: production that lands during an expensive part of the day is worth more than production during a cheap one, so a west-facing array that runs late into the afternoon can beat a nominally larger east-facing one. Under tiered pricing, timing is almost irrelevant and only the total kWh you avoid buying counts, which makes annual production the number to maximise.
Solar reshapes your consumption profile enough that the plan you were on beforehand is often the wrong one afterwards. Before an install, a typical household buys a steady load through the day. After it, the daytime purchase largely disappears and what remains is concentrated in the evening and overnight, when your panels contribute nothing. If your remaining consumption has moved into the cheapest hours, a time-of-use plan may now suit you better than it did. If it has become lumpy and hard to shift, a tiered plan may be the calmer choice.
Switching is administrative rather than technical. Customers can change plans through Tillsonburg Hydro's Engage360 online portal, or by mailing a signed election form to the utility's Lisgar Avenue office, with the change confirmed within 10 business days. That is a short enough turnaround to make reviewing the choice a reasonable habit after your first full year with the system, rather than a decision you make once and never revisit.
What a system in Tillsonburg generates annually
The modelled yield here is 1,146 kWh a year for every kW of installed capacity. That translates to roughly 5,730 kWh a year from a 5 kW array, about 8,020 kWh from 7 kW, and around 11,460 kWh from a 10 kW system. Treat those as long-run averages: a dull summer and a bright one will land on opposite sides of them.
To size a system, work from your own bills rather than from your roof. Total the kWh across twelve consecutive months and divide by 1,146, and the result is the array size that would roughly match a year of your household's consumption. That is the number to design around, adjusted down for whatever the roof cannot physically or sensibly hold.
Expect the output to be lopsided across the year. Most of the annual total arrives between late spring and early autumn, when days are long and the sun is high; December and January contribute a small fraction of that, and snow lying on a shallow roof plane holds production at zero until it clears. A steeper pitch sheds snow faster. Shading is the other variable that a satellite estimate will get wrong, so insist on a proper site assessment before you accept a production number.
What happens to the electricity you export
Tillsonburg Hydro Inc. is the local distribution company here, so it is where a net metering application goes and the utility that reconciles your exports against your imports. Ontario's terms are provincial and consistent between distributors: exported kWh are credited kWh-for-kWh at the retail electricity rate against future bills, unused credits carry forward for up to 12 months, and no cash is paid out for a net annual surplus.
That 12 month window is the mechanism that makes a summer surplus useful in February, and it is also the reason oversizing is a poor investment. Credits that outlive the window simply expire. So a quote for a system that generates well beyond your annual consumption needs a specific reason behind it, such as an electric vehicle you are about to buy or an electric heating conversion you have already decided on, rather than the fact that the roof had space left.
On the connection side, the Ontario Energy Board raised the simplified micro-embedded generation threshold from 10 kW to 12 kW on May 1, 2026, which pulled more residential systems into the streamlined process. Ask your installer which path your proposed system takes, and get the application in before you commit money to equipment or lock in an install date, since the utility review and permission to operate sit between a finished install and a system that is allowed to export.
Two thirds of the town has a private roof
Single-detached houses make up 67.7% of Tillsonburg's 8,230 dwellings, so most residents have a private roof to design around and no third party in the decision. For that group the questions are practical: which planes face usefully, how old the shingles are, what the pitch is, where shade falls in the late afternoon, and whether the electrical panel can accept the interconnection without an upgrade.
Apartments are a larger share than the town's size might suggest. 13.8% of dwellings are low-rise apartments and 6% are high-rise, so about a fifth of all homes have landlord-controlled roofs where the resident cannot authorise an installation. If you live in one, the productive question is whether the building owner has evaluated a rooftop system, because one building-scale project reaches far more households than any unit-level workaround.
Row houses account for another 6%, which means narrower, shared-structure roof planes: less usable area than the roof appears to offer once setbacks and access pathways are accounted for, and a neighbour to coordinate with if installation access crosses the property line. Semi-detached houses at 3.5% and duplexes at 2.5% make up the small remainder, and duplexes in particular need the ownership question settled in writing first, since one roof commonly serves two separate legal units.
Permit fees scale with the project, and nothing is solar-specific
Tillsonburg's building permit fees vary depending on the size and scale of the project, set out in a fee schedule linked from the town's building and renovating page. The town does not single out solar installations in that guidance, and it does not publish a town-specific review timeline for them either. That absence is worth knowing rather than filling in: it means you should ask the building department directly whether a permit is required for your array and what the fee will be, instead of relying on a figure from another municipality.
Because the fee scales with the project rather than being a flat charge, it is a line item to confirm before you compare quotes. Ask each installer explicitly whether the permit fee is inside their price or billed to you on top, and whether they file the application or leave it to you. Two proposals that look close on the headline number can differ once that is settled.
Treat any turnaround estimate you hear with the same caution. Nothing published by the town supports a specific number of days for a solar permit, so a timeline quoted in a sales conversation is an estimate rather than a commitment. Separately, the electrical work falls under the Electrical Safety Authority with its own permit and inspection, so plan for two approval tracks and confirm both have been closed out before making a final payment.
What you can actually apply for today
Ontario's Home Renovation Savings Program is the main provincial incentive for residential solar. It launched in January 2025 and has an expanded 2026-27 program year running from April 1, 2026 to March 31, 2027, with combined rebates of up to $10,000 for solar PV paired with battery storage. The pairing is the basis of the offer rather than an optional upgrade, so panels on their own sit outside the headline amount.
The condition to raise with an installer early is a design one. Homeowners taking the HRSP solar incentive are generally directed toward a load-displacement configuration rather than full net metering, so you are choosing between two different system concepts instead of adding a rebate to the arrangement described above. Ask for both to be modelled against your own twelve months of consumption, and confirm the current program rules before applying, since they have changed once already.
Federal support is thinner than it was. The interest-free Canada Greener Homes Loan of up to $40,000 closed to new applications on October 2, 2025 and funds only previously approved files. Its replacement, the Canada Greener Homes Affordability Program, has been running since September 2025 and delivers no-cost retrofits through participating provinces, which do not currently include Ontario, for low- to median-income households, with solar PV federally eligible although each province sets its own technology list. Canada has no residential investment tax credit equivalent to the American one. Municipal or utility financing, such as a local improvement charge or on-bill arrangement, appears periodically and is worth asking about while you are collecting quotes, but it is not something to plan around.