Regulation 1004-2, and the approval that can sit on top of your permit
Terrebonne sets out its permits and certificates in urbanism regulation 1004-2, which defines the powers and responsibilities arising from the urbanism regulations, the procedures for each authorisation, the mandatory content of an application and how applications are processed. That is the ordinary track. The city then notes that some applications are subject to other urbanism regulations requiring an additional approval before a permit is issued, and names three: plans d'implantation et d'integration architecturale, demolitions and listed heritage buildings.
Demolition is irrelevant to a solar project. The other two are not. A PIIA review looks at how a change reads, which is precisely what a visible rooftop array is, and a listed heritage building carries its own constraints. Neither is a rule that applies everywhere in the city; both are address-specific, which is exactly why you cannot answer the question from a website.
Ask the planning department two things about your address before anything is designed: whether the property is subject to a PIIA, and whether it is a listed heritage building. If either answer is yes, ask what the submission requires and how visibility from the street is assessed, then ask your installer for a production estimate on each roof plane that could realistically be approved. Choosing between real options beats discovering the constraint after the drawings are final.
The city says incomplete applications cause delays. Take it literally
Terrebonne states plainly that an incomplete application results in additional delays. Municipalities do not usually put that in writing unless it is a recurring problem, so treat it as a warning rather than boilerplate. A file missing one document does not wait once, it waits, comes back, and waits again behind everything that arrived in the meantime.
The defence is boring and effective. Get the list of required documents from the planning department for a rooftop installation specifically, rather than for renovations generally. Check the assembled application against that list before it is submitted. Agree in writing with your installer who assembles it, who submits it and who follows up, so that no item falls between you.
This matters more if you turn out to be on the PIIA track, because a review adds a step that a returned application then has to repeat. The cost of getting the file right the first time is an hour; the cost of not doing so is measured in weeks.
Hydro-Quebec, two approvals of its own, and the credit bank
Hydro-Quebec distributes electricity in Terrebonne, and connecting an array means enrolling in the option d'autoproduction. A licensed CMEQ electrician files the installation request rather than you, and Hydro-Quebec evaluates whether the local network has capacity to accept your generation before granting conditional acceptance. That sits between a signed contract and a system allowed to export, and it runs alongside the municipal process rather than after it.
So a Terrebonne project can carry three approval steps: the building permit, a possible PIIA or heritage review, and the distributor's acceptance. Put all of them on one timeline before equipment is ordered, and do not accept a payment schedule that exposes a deposit to a date nobody has promised.
Once running, surplus energy banks as a credit in kilowatt hours and offsets later consumption at parity, carrying summer production into winter bills. The bank resets every 24 months and any balance left at that point is settled well below the retail price you pay to buy electricity back. Capacity is not the binding constraint, since the option is capped at 1,000 kW. Your own consumption is, so size to twelve months of your own kilowatt hour totals rather than to the roof area available.
Grants and financing
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. Hydro-Quebec projects that this brings a typical residential payback from 25 to 30 years down to roughly 10 to 12 years.
Because the grant pays per kilowatt installed, a review that reduces the size of an approved array reduces the grant with it. In a city where a PIIA may apply to your address, that is a live consideration rather than a theoretical one: settle the review question before you sign a contract for a specific system size.
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.