Hydro-Magog, and the question its tariff does not answer
Magog operates its own municipal electric utility rather than being served by Hydro-Quebec. The city says it charges the same rates, and Hydro-Magog's tariff by-law confirms the same two-tier Tarif D structure, with a lower price for roughly the first 40 kilowatt hours a day and a higher price above that. On the consumption side, then, a Magog bill behaves like a Hydro-Quebec bill.
The generation side is where the two diverge, and it diverges in the direction that matters. Hydro-Magog's tariff by-law does not describe a net-metering programme. Hydro-Quebec's option d'autoproduction, the arrangement that credits surplus solar in kilowatt hours against later bills, is a Hydro-Quebec programme and Magog customers are not Hydro-Quebec customers. We are not going to assume an equivalent exists here, because the document does not say so.
So the first call is to Hydro-Magog, and it should happen before you get a single quote. Ask, in writing: may a customer-owned generator connect to your network, what happens to electricity I export, what interconnection and metering are required, at what cost, and is there any credit or compensation for surplus. Do not accept an installer's assurance in place of the utility's answer. If the answer is that there is no export arrangement, the design question changes completely, because the value then comes from electricity you consume as you generate it rather than from anything you send back.
How to size a system when the export rule is unknown
In a normal Quebec city the sizing rule is simple: build to your annual consumption, because surplus banks as kilowatt hour credits. Here that rule is conditional on an answer you do not have yet, and the two possible answers point in opposite directions.
If Hydro-Magog does credit exports, size to your annual consumption as you would anywhere else, and ask what happens to an unused balance and whether it expires. If it does not, then every kilowatt hour you generate and do not use at the moment you generate it is worth nothing, and the array should be sized to your daytime consumption rather than your annual total. Those are very different systems, and the difference is not marginal.
That makes the utility's answer the first input to the design, not a detail to confirm later. Get it before you accept a quote, and if an installer proposes a system size before that answer exists, ask them what they are assuming and where they got it. Natural Resources Canada puts Magog at about 1,146 kilowatt hours a year per kilowatt installed on a well oriented, unshaded array, which is the number to apply once you know which sizing rule you are working under.
A third of the housing is apartments, which changes who decides
Magog has roughly 13,440 dwellings, and just over half of them, 50.1 percent, are single-detached houses with a private roof. The striking figure is the next one: 33.9 percent are low-rise apartments, an unusually high share that reflects the condo and apartment stock of a resort town. Duplexes add 8 percent, semi-detached 3.6 percent, row houses 2.3 percent and high-rise 0.3 percent.
That means about a third of residents here cannot simply commission a rooftop array, because the roof is a common element or belongs to a building owner rather than to a resident. If you are a co-owner, the governing document is the declaration of co-ownership and its rules on work affecting common elements, and the project goes to the syndicate as a proposal rather than to an installer as an order. If you rent, the conversation is with the building's owner and it turns on their economics, not yours.
For a duplex, the roof is usually shared with one other owner, which is a far easier negotiation than a syndicate but still needs to be settled in writing before a design exists. Cover fixings and penetrations, access for maintenance, and who pays when the covering is replaced. For the single-detached half of the market, none of this applies and the roof itself is the only question.
Grants and financing, with one large caveat
Hydro-Quebec's LogisVert residential solar grant pays 1,000 $ per kW of installed capacity and covers up to 40 percent of eligible project costs, typically landing around 5,000 $ to 6,000 $ on a residential system. Installations must be completed on or after June 30, 2025, and the claim goes through the LogisVert portal within 9 months of the installation date.
The caveat is the same one that runs through this page: LogisVert is a Hydro-Quebec programme, and Magog is served by its own municipal utility. Confirm eligibility with the programme in writing before you sign a contract, and put the question in the same conversation as the export question above. Those two answers together determine whether a Magog project looks like the rest of Quebec or like something quite different.
Federally the options have narrowed. The Canada Greener Homes Loan, interest-free up to 40,000 $, stopped accepting new applications on October 2, 2025, and only previously approved loans are still being funded. The Canada Greener Homes Affordability Program replaced it in September 2025, delivering no-cost retrofits through provincial partners 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.