One for one, in kilowatt-hours
Under section 13 of the Renewable Energy Act, the kilowatt-hours a customer supplies are subtracted from the kilowatt-hours delivered, and a monthly surplus is credited to the account in kilowatt-hours. That is genuine one for one crediting, and it is a straightforward thing to model: a unit you export in July is a unit you draw back in November.
Generators are capped at 100 kW, comfortably above a household system, and installations of 30 kW and larger may need three-phase service. Maritime Electric applies the rule across the Island and the City of Summerside's own utility applies it within Summerside, separately but on the same terms.
One billing detail worth knowing: a net metering customer pays one service charge even though two meters are installed. That is the kind of thing worth confirming on your own account rather than assuming, but it means the arrangement does not carry a second fixed charge.
The 31 October expiry, and what it means for sizing
The credits hold no cash value, and on 31 October each year any credits outstanding from the preceding calendar year expire, unless your net metering agreement sets another compliant date. Nothing is paid out for what is left.
Line that up with the seasons and the design rule follows. Production peaks across the summer and falls through the winter, so a system matched to your annual consumption builds a credit balance in the bright months and draws it down in the dark ones, which is exactly what the mechanism is for. A system built well beyond your consumption accumulates a balance it never spends, and once a year that surplus is written off.
So the useful size here is the one that matches your own annual usage, not the one that fills the roof. Bring twelve months of bills to the first conversation, ask for production modelled month by month rather than as an annual total, and ask what the credit balance looks like heading into the expiry date.
What the power you displace is worth
Both utilities charge 17.84 cents per kWh on the first 2,000 kWh of a billing period and 14.23 cents above that, effective 1 August 2026. Because crediting is one for one in kilowatt-hours rather than in dollars, you do not need to track which tier a credit is applied against, but the rate still tells you what each displaced unit is worth.
Production here runs about 1,104 kWh a year for every kW installed, a figure from national photovoltaic potential data rather than measured local systems. Multiply it by a proposed system size for a rough annual output, then treat that as a ceiling: orientation, pitch, shading and the usable area left after vents and setbacks all move the real number downward.
Ask for production modelled per roof plane with the shading assumptions stated. On a modest yield, panels added to a compromised plane raise the headline total while earning very little, and a per-plane breakdown is the only way to see it.
Who controls the roof here
Charlottetown has more shared-roof and rental housing than a typical small city. Single-detached houses are 43.6 percent of the stock, and that is the segment where an owner controls their own roof and can run the project themselves.
Low-rise apartments are 39 percent, which means nearly four in ten dwellings share a roof under one owner or condo board. If you live in one, an individual installation is not available to you, and an array on the building would normally offset a building account rather than any single unit. The productive move is to put the question to the owner or the board rather than to an installer.
Semi-detached homes are 9 percent and row houses 3.3 percent, and both often require a neighbour's sign-off before panels go up, on top of establishing where your roof plane actually ends. Duplexes add another 3.2 percent of shared-roof housing, where the array feeds one electrical service and therefore reduces one household's bill.
Permits, and the 21 day appeal window
Building and development permits in Charlottetown are governed by the provincial Planning Act rather than by a purely municipal process. Approvals are posted weekly, so there is a public record of what has been granted.
The detail worth planning around is that anyone aggrieved by a permit decision has 21 days to appeal to the Island Regulatory and Appeals Commission. That window applies to decisions generally rather than to solar specifically, but it means a granted permit is not the end of the story until the period has run.
For most rooftop projects this is a formality. It is worth knowing if your installation is unusually visible, or if a neighbour has already raised an objection, because in that situation the schedule has an extra three weeks in it that nobody will mention unless you ask.