Solar is not on Granby's exemption list
Granby is specific about what does not need a permit. Its published list covers minor roof work: repairing a chimney, fascia or soffit, or replacing a few shingles. Adding new equipment like solar panels does not appear on that list, so a solar project falls back to the standard permit or certificate process through the Service de l'aménagement et de la protection du territoire. Read that as a helpful clarification rather than an obstacle: you know before you start which side of the line your project sits on.
What the city does not give you is a schedule. Granby states that processing times vary by permit type and by time of year, and it publishes no specific number of days. That is worth planning around directly. Submit early, submit a complete application, and ask the service what its current turnaround looks like for the season you are applying in rather than assuming a number. The city says the season itself moves the number, and a complete file is the only part of the timeline you control.
We also have no verified record of an architectural-integration overlay or heritage designation applying to properties in Granby. That is an absence of information rather than a guarantee that none applies, so ask the same department whether any architectural review attaches to your address when you ask about the permit itself.
Your credit is measured in kilowatt-hours, not dollars
Under Hydro-Québec's option de mesurage net, a Granby household banks surplus production as a kilowatt-hour credit. That distinction matters more than it sounds. A kilowatt-hour credit is indexed to the electricity itself, so it holds its value against a later rate change, and it offsets a later kilowatt-hour of consumption one for one no matter which block of Tarif D that consumption falls into. What it never does is turn into money at the retail price.
The bank is cleared every 24 months, on 31 March of an even year. Whatever positive balance stands at that moment is paid out at a wholesale price, well below the retail rate you pay for electricity you buy. So there are effectively two exchange rates for a solar kilowatt-hour in Quebec: the good one, where you consume it yourself or draw it back out of the bank as consumption; and the poor one, where it is still sitting in the bank at the reset and gets cashed out. Design decisions should aim as much production as possible at the first.
The mechanics of getting connected are the same for every Granby address. A licensed electrician who is a member of the Corporation des maîtres électriciens du Québec submits the connection request, and Hydro-Québec issues conditional and then final authorization before the system may be energized. Tarif D itself is a two-tier block rate, with a lower price for roughly the first 40 kWh a day, so there is no on-peak or off-peak hour to design around.
Output in Granby and how to size against it
Natural Resources Canada's dataset puts Granby at 1,159 kWh a year for each kW of installed capacity, on an unobstructed installation. A 6 kW array on that basis produces around 6,950 kWh a year and a 10 kW array around 11,600 kWh. Line either figure up against the annual consumption on your own bills: with the credit bank resetting every two years, matching your own use is what makes a system pay, and any size chosen for reasons other than that number needs a separate justification.
Local conditions move a real roof off the benchmark in both directions. Shade from trees or a neighbouring building during the afternoon takes a bite out of the total, a split east and west layout produces a flatter curve at a lower annual figure than a single south-facing plane, and snow cover means Quebec production is weighted heavily toward the months between spring and autumn. None of that is a reason to distrust the benchmark; it is a reason to expect a site-specific model and to ask what assumptions it makes.
Roofs, apartments and shared walls in Granby
Granby's housing splits close to evenly between two situations. Low-rise apartment buildings under five storeys hold 40.1 percent of dwellings, where the roof is common property and the syndicate of co-owners makes the call rather than any single owner. Single-detached houses account for 38.8 percent, and those owners decide alone. High-rise apartments are 1.6 percent of the stock, so a building-wide rooftop decision on a tower is an uncommon situation here.
Semi-detached homes at 7.9 percent and duplexes at 7.1 percent put a second dwelling under a shared roof structure, and row houses add 1.5 percent. On any of those, the design questions arrive earlier: how the array's weight is carried across a shared assembly, how a penetration is flashed where the structure continues into the neighbouring unit, and whose consent needs to be documented. Those are answerable questions, but answering them after the panels are ordered is the expensive order to do it in.
Whatever the building type, three physical facts drive the quote: the orientation and shading of the usable roof planes, how much service life is left in the covering underneath, and whether the existing electrical service has room for the array without an upgrade. An installer who has not looked at your panel and your roof covering is estimating two of those three.
Adding a battery, and adding it to the permit
Granby's exemption list is the useful reference point here too. It covers minor roof repairs, not new equipment, so a battery installation sits on the same side of the line as the panels: it is a project the city expects to see rather than one you can simply carry out. If storage is part of the plan, describe it to the Service de l'aménagement et de la protection du territoire in the same conversation as the array, so that one complete application covers the whole project rather than two partial ones filed weeks apart.
On whether to add one at all, Quebec's rate structure narrows the case considerably. Tarif D is a two-tier block rate with no time-of-use periods, so there is no price gap between hours for a battery to arbitrage. Hydro-Québec's net metering bank already returns surplus at parity in kilowatt-hours, so exporting in summer and drawing the credit back in winter does the same job as storing the energy. What is left is backup: a battery with the right switching keeps chosen circuits running through an outage. That is a resilience purchase, and it should be judged on how often your address loses supply and what that costs you, not on a payback figure.
The one energy case that survives is a system that will generate more over a year than the household uses. There, self-consuming surplus beats leaving it in a bank that is cleared every 24 months. Sizing to your own consumption in the first place is the cheaper way to reach the same result.
Grants and financing available in Quebec
Hydro-Québec's LogisVert grant pays $1,000 per kW of installed capacity, capped at 40 percent of eligible project costs, which typically works out to $5,000 to $6,000 for a residential system. Eligible installations must be completed on or after June 30, 2025, and the application runs through the LogisVert portal within 9 months of the installation date. Ask, before signing, which party files the claim and what documentation the portal will require, because the grant is claimed after the work and the window does not reopen.
Federal support is limited. The Canada Greener Homes Loan, interest-free up to $40,000, stopped accepting new applications on October 2, 2025, and only previously approved loans continue to be funded. The Canada Greener Homes Affordability Program replaced it in September 2025 and delivers no-cost retrofits through provincial partners for low- to median-income households; solar PV is federally eligible, but each province sets its own technology list, so eligibility has to be checked rather than assumed. There is no Canadian federal investment tax credit for residential solar.